The One With Frank Kern - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #62

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and the Joe Polish. The Joe Polish and Joe. We have the one, the only, Frank.

Socially awkward, Mr. Frank Kern.

I'd prefer it if you would address me from this point or at least introduce me from this point forward as Dr. Frank Kern, Attorney at Law, Chief Engineer with NASA.

Attorney at Law, NASA. That's great.

That's a good sounding if I've ever heard one.

Well, you know you're gonna say what can I say about Frank Kern, right, To let everybody know who Frank Kern is. But I think there's a good, good chance that people listening to this call, this particular podcast who are indeed marketing lovers, will be familiar with Frank Kern. Probably even have seen his State of the Internet addresses for the last two years now. Frank or 3?

3.

It shows you that Dean really keeps.

Up on your stuff.

He really does. I really do. And I mean it's. I have been fascinated watching the whole thing unfold. But I love how Frank has sort of self appointed himself as the president of the intern and every year he gets online to address the world and let everybody know the state of the Internet. And I think it's been a fantastic thing. So I'm very excited that Frank is here with us.

Well, Frank, first off, for people that don't know who you are, do you mind giving like a little bit of a bio in as serious of a manner as a person like you is capable of delivering? Sure.

Well, my name is Dr. Frank Kern, attorney at law. I'm the chief engineer with NASA, now retired, currently serving as head cosmetologist for the Avon Corporation. And in addition to those duties and specialties in areas of practice, I'm also a direct response Internet marketing copywriter and consultant. And the thing that I like to do that sort of sets me apart from others is. I don't really know how to describe it. I guess you would call it friendly marketing where it's engaging an audience and consuming a marketing message, where they actually enjoy the process, gain something of value during the marketing process, and as a result of that process are more likely to buy than if they had gone through a traditional regular marketing process.

Right.

Well, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, marketing should not be, you shouldn't use humor in marketing and things like that, but you tend to do it all the time and people find you to be funny and exciting and handsome and sexy and all that.

So are you saying you don't find Them to be funny. Is that.

No, I was trying to say that in a disguised way.

Of course.

Dude. I'm infatuated with Frank.

His.

His long, glowing hair.

I got it cut off. What's not to like? But I was just.

Well, I still have pictures.

He's getting all. That's good to see that you keep up with Frank. He's getting all serious, serious right now. Yeah, exactly. He's this guy. He's wearing a Tom Ford athletic jacket right this very moment, he told us. And he doesn't even exercise. That's all he wears Tom Ford and all that custom stuff.

Well, that's good. Well, let's go. Let's go to the current state of the Internet. Where are we at with everything right now?

Where we've always been. You know, the Internet's still there. It's still awesome. It's getting bigger geographically now. It takes up more square footage, you know, which is cool. There's more ways to get your stuff in front of other people. And thank God there are exponentially increasing ways in which our competition can become distracted, therefore allowing us to focus on customer acquisition as opposed to fans on Facebook and so forth.

Right.

I love it.

That's actually. That's actually a really good point. How do you. How do you work? I mean, how do you spend your time? Like, when you go and write, do you have, like a schedule? Do you have, like, rituals that you do?

How.

How is Frank Kern productive? So. Because most people like that, you know, I mean, heck, we're joking around all the time and stuff, but a lot of people think you probably just spend your time just dicking around all day and surfing and all that, but you actually get a lot of stuff done. So what is.

How are you productive? That's the funniest thing I've ever heard. A lot of people think you spend your time dicking around all day. Well, I have some crayons. Well, you do.

I mean, I actually know you do, but I'm gonna try to get you to eek out some useful productivity.

You don't work like a dog from hell. Really? I work all the time. I like it. You know, it's just when I don't work, I'll not work for extended periods of time and really pack in a lot of dicking around during those periods. But, you know, Bank, I've been on like a six month working bin. Not six months, six weeks. Good Lord, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Six weeks, hard work, binge, you know, and usually what will happen is I'll be dicking around and eventually that'll get old and I'll come up with an evil scheme. And usually the evil scheme is a result of me wanting to achieve something, you know, and that's always, always the scheme is concocted as a result of reverse engineering back from the desired thing that I want to have or experience or lifestyle or whatever, you know. So then I'll get the evil scheme and I'll think about it forever. And then finally, you know, it's like a moth or it's really more like a hummingbird coming out of a cocoon, you know, so the cocoon opens and then I just work like a freak in this mad dash of productivity and not sleeping and not eating and just, you know, being Howard Hughes, like, basically. And then the project is complete and I'll go back to dicking around again.

There you go. You mentioned something there. You talked about how you're such a big fan of reverse engineering and how it's usually the work binges are based on wanting to acquire something. And one of the things that I wanted to talk about on this episode is the complete and total reinvention of Frank Kern over the last five or six years. And I think there's a lot of lessons in that. And I wondered if maybe you'd share that process or how that all.

Well, yeah, that's interesting. You use the word reinvention. So I think you're talking specifically about how I used to live in Georgia and have short hair and kind of just sit around in my basement and work all the time and then move to California and ended up having, you know, mid back length blonde hair and looking like I've been baked in the sun and sorting all the time. Yeah, so what I never really talked about publicly, because there was no point in it, was that I always wanted to do that since I was a kid. So I actually grew up. I was born in Georgia, but I grew up in the Florida Keys on the ocean. Always wanted to return to the ocean and even read Surfer magazine as a child in Georgia, where of course, there are no waves. So my moving to California was really. It was. I guilted myself in doing it. That was my logic. Obviously I wanted to do it. So I really. I guess I guilted my family into doing it. And the guilt was I can't possibly feel good about myself as a father if I don't give my children the opportunity to grow up in this environment instead of this Georgia environment where I am. No disrespect to Georgia. But there's just no contest, you know, there's so much more opportunity for them here and everything. So once I got here, it was like, wow, this, you know, this life really exists. You really can go to the beach and surf all the time, you know, hang out in the sun. And that corresponded with right around the time I officially quit giving a damn. So up until that point, I had really tried to appear to be professional and like a real person, which I am very professional with my clients, you know, my higher level clients and all that kind of thing. But I wanted to have like this image that I thought you were supposed to look like if you were a successful business person, you know. And I moved out here and nobody knew me and I didn't have any of the stuff I'd been. I didn't have the identity that I grew up with. I didn't have to fit into the shell of, well, you know, you went to this school, you're part of this family, you're supposed to look like this. So I essentially came out to California, said, aw, fuck it, and started surfing a lot, and really designed everything from that point to fit into that lifestyle. So it was a classic reverse engineering play.

So, I mean, what's the lesson there for people and advice that you have? Because, I mean, do you think most people in business. Well, I already know the answer to this, and I just want to hear. Well, I'm gonna say it, you know, what do you. Yeah, I want you to. Obviously, I'm a jive when I say right now. So, I mean, what are you. What are your thoughts on how most people try to make money, do work, be successful, all that. You just think it's. Most people are just. It's a big facade or people are scared or what do you think is.

I think it's a very poorly thought out process. So usually we identify with our job and our career. So, I mean, as this is, you know, going from high school, guidance counselor sessions, what do you want to be when you grow up? And nobody ever says happy. You know, they say, I want to be a blank. And then their career identifies them as a person. So usually you have someone saying, I want this career, and therefore I'm going to cram in all of this activity to match up to whatever my preconceived notion of this career is. Right. But that leads to the epidemic we have, you know, hardcore drug and alcohol abuse that people trying to unplug from their lives through, you know, staring at their iPhone or playing video games all day or Watching TV or whatever it may be, because it's just, you know, no one is really fulfilled. So I think the better thought process for it is what do I want my life to look like? You know, And I don't mean to sound all metaphysical and you know, woo woo and all that. That's not really my scene. But it's important to say, all right, well, you know, what do I really want to do? I mean, do I want to work all the time or would I rather go to the beach and you know, what do I want? How many days a week do I want to work? Like in a perfect scenario, assuming that it's really unlikely for us to never ever work. I mean, even if you're a billionaire, you'll eventually go to work. I think I'm not a billionaire. One would be my guess that you get tired of sitting around, you know, so assuming that you're working in some capacity is mandatory. How do you want that to occur? So what I've always done is said, well, here's what I really like right now. My interests always change. You know, I've usually got about a five year burn rate on being really into something, and then I'll be really into something else, you know, so what am I really into? You know, how much time do I want to dedicate to this? A week? Is it a daytime activity, nighttime activity, whatever? And then how can I build work around that? And then what is the income goal and how much stuff do I have to do to produce the income? And within this frame of time that I've allowed myself to do the actual work, which is in reality not who defines me as a person, but merely a means to an end. So that type of thought process has really helped in terms of what Dean would refer to as the reinvention from a guy who just, you know, was a quote unquote Internet marketer to becoming like, you know, a dude who just has, is more really famous for lifestyle and enjoyment.

Before you went into that though, you said something I think is really important, where you said, you know, I just think people's, it's, you know, what they're doing with their life, their career. Not the exact words you said, but it's just not well thought out. And you know, you tend to think things through. I mean, as much as, you know, you have this whole Persona and everything, you're a very strategic guy. Anyone that really is good at marketing has to be, because you really have to understand human behavior and psychology and persuasion and at different levels than what they're going to teach in say, like a psychology course, but you really understand how to motivate and influence and persuade people to do things that you want. And you've done that, of course, to yourself to design the sort of life and work that you do and that you teach other people how to do.

So.

On the short time that we have talking on the I Love Marketing podcast, what are suggestions would you have have for people listening that, you know, either aren't where they want to be, to flat out hate their jobs or businesses to, you know, get their shit together and turn it all around and start making something happen? I mean, love to get some suggestions.

The immediate thing is to, you know, get your shit together and turn it all around and make something happen and quit screwing around. So, I mean, on that level, you know, if someone's just miserable and they hate their life and all this kind of stuff, they probably inherently have some idea of what they'd rather be doing, you know, so let's say you got a dude, he's a cpa and he would rather be a professional magician or something, you know, or you got a guy who's serving ex customers in his business and he'd rather, you know, raise his fees by 500% and serve y customers. And the reason that person usually doesn't do it is twofold. One is they're too distracted by other stuff, you know, and it's often a syndrome of the guy who's spending all his time cleaning his desk instead of prospecting for customers, that old metaphor and everything. And then there's the other situation where they're afraid, afraid of what will happen if it doesn't work. So I would suggest to those people to abide by my two commandments, which are commandment number one is thou shalt not fuck around. So if there's something that you need to do in order to become happy or increase your level of success and you know, you need to do it, then there's. There's one thing and one thing only to do is to quit fucking around and do it. You know, quit reading blogs, quit going to whatever your favorite website about entertainment is. You don't need to buy another day planner. We don't need any more calculators. You know, get. Get on the phone, call the customer, tell them to buy your stuff, whatever it is, do it. And the second thing is to quit being a pussy and quit being afraid and do so with the knowledge that you will unquestioningly screw something up. And you will probably at some point look Stupid, regardless of what you do, you know. So we have this. We know that in every area of our lives, things always go wrong. Like, you know, if you're married, you have this great marriage, eventually you're going to get in a fight with your husband or wife. Probably won't last forever, but, you know, every couple has a fight, you know, annually or something, right? You have children, they're going to misbehave sometimes. And none of this surprises us. If you have a dog, he's going to crap on the floor one day, you know, or every day. And none of that surprises us. But for some reason, we think that in our businesses and our professional careers that everything should be perfect all the time. And therefore, we're afraid to pull the trigger, metaphorically speaking, out of fear that, what if it's not perfect? You know? Well, the good news is you can stop worrying about it. It's definitely not going to be perfect. You're definitely going to screw it up. And your mission is to go ahead and screw it up and break it so you can figure out how to fix it and then roll. Because typically you only screw it up, like once or twice. And then you go through those. They're never as bad as you thought they were going to be, typically. And then smooth sailing from there on out, you know, so that's. That's like big answer. And then smaller answers is, if you're unhappy in the situation, get very, very clear about what it is you really want. So let's say it's an income thing. You know, you say, Well, I make 100 grand, I want to make a million dollars. Well, okay, great. Pretty easy to do, really. You just determine what it is that you got that's worth money and how much net profit per transaction you have for giving someone that thing of yours. And then say, okay, well, if it makes me, you know, let's say $10,000 per transaction, then I'm going to need to get 10 customers. No, I'm sorry, I'm going to need to get 100 customers. I was understand. I was under the impression there's no math involved in today's episode.

You don't have to know math. There's people that know math, Frank.

So you say, I'm going to have to get 100 customers, and then just say, what the hell do I got to do to get 100 customers? You know, and what daily activities have to happen to produce 100 customers and start trying to get them? And again, know that you're probably not going to get them at first. Sometimes you do, and when you do, you need to write a book about it and make it look like you planned the whole thing so you seem smart. But usually you don't get them the first try. It takes a couple tries and inevitably it'll happen.

Well, you know, first off, I like all that. That's very good advice. It's hardcore, it's funny and it's, you know, it goes kind of, you know, so the rules according to Frank, one, thou shalt not fuck around. And two, quit being a pussy. And that, that is pure wisdom right there. Now you can't delegate courage though. And to be an entrepreneur requires a certain level of courage and a lot of people don't have it. Or, you know, did you, were you ever in a point where you're like, just afraid you were? I mean, or do you really think everyone can do what successful marketers and entrepreneurs do? Or how does one determine.

I think that everyone has the ability to figure out what they want specifically through trial and error, or actually I think they have the ability to figure out what they want specifically come up with a blueprint to make it happen, and then through trial and error continue working towards that goal and adjusting the blueprint till it happens. I think every single person has the ability to do that. And if they can't make it it happen, they can get really, really close. So let's say I wanted to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. And I said, okay, I'm going to play these notes over and over and over again every day until I play like Jimi Hendrix. Probably I'm not going to actually play exactly like Jimi Hendrix just as good as him. But if I keep at it, then I'll get pretty damn good where it's close enough. So you might not make $20 million over your lifetime, but you might only make 15. And that's pretty damn good. Whereas if you didn't do anything, you'd have been stuck in this dead end job. So I think everybody has that capacity. The difference is between the people who are really successful and those who aren't are the ones who are really successful, have the drive to make it happen. And in my case it was fear. When I moved out to California, I had just been sued by the Federal Trade Commission, lost everything I had, had to take out a second mortgage on my home and then had to rebuild my business, pay off the second mortgage on my house, sell that, ended up buying a new house, finally rebuilt my life in Georgia, decided that if I did not get it together and really make Something happen that I would live in that town that I hated forever. My children would live there, you know, and be in the same situation I was in. And their chances of being. No disrespect to the state, of course, but where I was from really wasn't that great of a place. So their chances of growing up to be ignorant rednecks would have been really, really high, you know. So I said, well, shit, if I don't make this happen, it's going to be really, really bad. And the truth is, when I came out here, it was the equivalent of, you know, burning the ships in the harbor. So I came out and wasn't loaded. When I came out here, I went from having a $2,300 mortgage payment to an $18,000 rent payment and a note on a house that I was remodeling. So I had a little bit of money, and I leveraged it all to the absolute hilt, you know, and was just paying. I mean, I had to make 50 grand a month just to eat. And I was barely making that when I moved in my own current comfortable environment. And it was. Hell, yeah, it was scary, but the alternative was worse, you know. So my worst case scenario is like, what if you try and you fail? Okay, well, you end up failing in paradise, you know, or you can live. You'd be pretty safe in this environment. That kind of sucks. And I think that's really what happens, you know, I think that's really everybody's choice. So let's say you have the safe job that you despise, or you have the customers that you're attracting that drive you crazy and you'd rather have customer A. Well, you can be pretty safe here in that gilded cage. Or. Or you can try and a likely succeed either immediately or through continuous effort, or you can try and fail. But if you try and fail, at least you're going to be failing doing something that makes you happy and fulfilled. So the difference is really understanding the course of not.

I think it's so amazing to hear that because a couple of things when you were talking about deciding what you want and what's going to make you happy, and a lot of people really kind of limit themselves on. On what they think they can actually get, as opposed to if they could get anything, you know, thinking about what.

That idea would be. Entrepreneurs, where we say, we start out, we have the job or the business that we hate, we say, I just want to be free of this, you know, so then we work really hard and we create the thing and we get the freedom. We're like, holy shit. This freedom's pretty good. I tell you what, would go nice with this, nicely with this freedom would be a nice side order of stuff. So then we start thinking about the stuff. Yeah, would you like some stuff? What do you have? We have cars and shit.

Yes.

Give me some. You know, so then we go out and we get the stuff, and then we say, man, you know, this is pretty big accumulation of stuff I got, and this is pretty expensive. Now I'm hanging out with all these dudes, and they got a bunch of stuff, and I'm gonna need some stuff to fit in. Next thing you know, I'm gonna need to grow the business even bigger to pay for the stuff. And so we grow the business bigger, we get more customers and more money and all that kind of stuff, and we buy more stuff. And eventually the thing that we created to provide us with, freedom begins to feel like the situation that we tried to escape from back when we first started. And we find ourselves saying, shit, man, I wish I just had a little bit of freedom from all this crap. Then we go straight back to the drawing board. And I don't mean we ended up by before whatever, but it's psychologically the same, unfulfilled. So I think people focus on the wrong stuff. A lot of times now. Things are awesome, you know, I mean, I've got all manner of crap that I don't need, and I like it, but I learned the lesson of knowing that it's not really what's very important, and I'm no longer consumed by it. Like, I only have three cars now instead of five. You know, which one of them's worth $500, incidentally? You know what I mean? So it's not my level. Obnoxious consumption has gone down because I know it's not fulfilling. So the smartest thing to do, I think, is to say, okay, what monetarily does it take for me to achieve freedom from the stuff that sucks? Well, first, I think the smart thing is to identify the stuff that sucks, you know, because we can define a successful business and a happy life by consistently producing enough money doing something we love, which enables us to have the things we want while avoiding doing stuff that sucks. So if we can do that, really, then we got it made. Who cares about anything else if we can do something that we love that makes us happy and that thing provides us with the stuff and the lifestyle that we want, not the stuff that dudes have told us we want through advertising, but what's really important to us and do so in a manner where we're avoiding doing stuff that sucks and we've got it made. So the first step in that is, first of all, identify all the stuff that sucks that you're just not going to settle for, you know, and that, that could be dealing with a certain type of clientele, that could be doing a certain type of work, whatever. Then identify what I call is your very best work. So, you know, within the context of everyone's ability, we all have multiple things we could do. So, I mean, Dean and Joe and myself, you know, we could be, we could teach copywriting or we could be copywriters, or I could script and direct videos or shoot videos, you know, and Dean could build, you know, done for you marketing campaigns and print media, and Joe could be a copywriter or, you know, teach high speed, all this kind of stuff. And within all the stuff that any of the three of us could do and everyone listening could do, there's usually one little subcategory that you really, really love. Mine particularly is evil schemes. Like, the best work for me is sitting down with someone who's already successful and spending an hour going, well, shit, man. I mean, if you want to double your business, you could just do this, this, this, and this. You know, that's easy for me. And it generally works pretty well for them. So you'd have to. You figure out what sucks that you don't want to do. You either eliminate, delegate, or reduce it, preferably eliminate it from your life completely. And then you look at all the stuff that you're doing now, that's pretty cool. And you either eliminate, delegate, or reduce it drastically. We're at the point where you're just focusing on the one thing that really meets all three major categories of satisfaction in the business context. The three categories that you want to get the highest scores are the category of fulfillment. So 1 out of 10, you want something, something as close as to a 10. The category of profitability to you personally, you want something as close to 10 as possible, and the category of value to the marketplace. So if you can find an activity that you can do, that's a 10 out of 10. On the three of those, that's the thing to do. And I don't think anyone really sits and thinks about that. We just say, oh, I'm going to become a blank, therefore, not thinking about their life, thinking about the career first, and what do I need to do to become a blank? And then it's just sort of down that path. Chasing this identity, which isn't really the best course of action most of the time.

Profound.

Well, there you go. What do you think of that, Dean?

You know, we've done. I mean, Frank and I have had these conversations for a long, long time. And, you know, one I remember in particular, we were with. With our friend John Reese in Orlando. And we were in. John had a war room at his. At his house. And we were all sitting around there. And that's where we really went through this. This idea, this exercise of creating. We ended up calling it the pimp lifestyle of what it would be if you could have anything you wanted to just really get it all out there and really decide, put a monetary value on what that would be. And I think of all the things. I mean, we were talking things like, like a Net Jets Jet card and. And, you know, I forget how much the houses were we were talking about. And vacations, like some, you know, crazy amount of vacations and nannies and chefs and the cars that we were talking about. I mean, it was all. But the whole thing ended up being that you could have that pimp lifestyle on. I think it was like, you know, $1.3 million a year or something like that. Wasn't it, Frank? Do you remember it?

Well, it was. It varied by person, you know, so then what we did is we figured the monthly cost and then said, well, what's the thing I got that I can give to the market in exchange for money? And how much money is it per transaction?

Yeah.

And then here's how many customers I got to get per month to make it happen. So you take your whole. That was a beautiful. I still do it. I've taken it kind of a step further now to focus on the time and the very best work, too, you know. But I thought it was amazing. And incidentally, I got every single thing that we outlined.

Yeah, exactly.

I made that happen with the exception of the chef. And it was because my wife at the time did not want one.

Right.

You know, I wanted one, she didn't want one. So, you know, thus the law was laid down and there's no chef gotten. And I didn't get the Net jets card because I became friends with a guy who owned a charter company.

No chef for you.

No chef for you.

Yeah, and that's.

Well, you know. Well, first what we need to do, though, is we need to talk a little bit about. I'll let you wrap up this whole thing, Dean, because maybe you're going to talk about, you know, that original meeting and what it spurned and all that. But the methodology of how all of us, all three of us have gotten what we've gotten, earned the money we've made, you know, created the value is in the area of advertising and marketing, predominantly direct response. And since Frank is very skilled in that area, it would be crazy not to be asking him, you know, some methodologies and figuring out, you know, how he does that. So.

I agree, I agree. Now you know, one of the things that, one of the first things that Frank did that was very popular was mass control. And you know this, when we first started talking to Frank, he mentioned that one of the things he really enjoys being a practitioner of is what he calls friendly marketing. And so, you know, I'd love to hear, maybe you could share Frank, some of the, you know, the tenets, the main things of, of mass control or how you have come to identify this friendly marketing.

Well, you know, the most important thing about that whole process is, can be boiled down to one core practice which I call delivering results in advance. And I learned it before I ever created mass control. This is like sort of the, the seed which was planted, which later grew into mass control. So mass control was created out of four experiences. When I created four different campaigns for four different people for myself and actually three people. The total from all campaigns over a combined 24 hour period was 23 point something million dollars. Which is amazing. That was the booked sales, you know, some people paid an installment. So God knows if they actually paid off their, their bills and everything, but assuming everyone would have paid, it would have been 23 point something million dollars. Which is great. And one of those promotions is something I did with a guy named Neil Strauss who wrote a book which at the time was a best seller. Awesome book. I know you both you guys have read it. It's called the Game and it's about this unusual subculture of pickup artists, like dudes who's, you know, pull their hobby basically is to pick up women and go on all these dates and all this kind of stuff. And Neil's slant on that was this is really cool, but in reality what you want to do is, is use this knowledge to sort of build self esteem and confidence and develop yourself as the type of person to type of person who deserves a really good girlfriend. So he created this course which was basically would teach guys, you know, like really solid together guys that just did not have the skills to go out and introduce themselves to women essentially how to get girlfriends. And I helped him launch it. Actually, actually helped him create it and launch it. Now obviously I didn't really need a content because that's not really my expertise at all. But I did help him launch the product and sell it. And we ended up doing $1.4 million in four hours. When we launched that thing, we sold it completely out. It was amazing. And during the process of creating demand for it, before it went live, we started hosting these teleseminars. Well, he started hosting these tele seminars. I kind of concocted the scheme, you know, and he would miraculously go along with what I said, which was probably one of the moment of terrible judgment on his part, you know, but he did. So I was like, yeah, we'll do these teleseminars and, and we'll teach some dudes some stuff and then they'll want to buy the thing. So what ended up happening is Neil said, okay, well if we're going to teach teleseminar, the first thing these guys need to learn how to do is overcome their fear of approaching girls. Because apparently that's a really big deal. You know, guys who are single and who aren't successful with women for whatever reason are terrified of going up and talking to a beautiful woman. They see it's very intimidating. So Neil does this teleseminar and he does it for free, you know, so people give their email address, they get the teleseminar details and they're on there. And he teaches them basically how to overcome that fear and how to go up and introduce themselves to a girl without looking stupid and without making her run off in terror. And that was pretty much, you know, the extent of the whole teleseminar. It took like an hour to teach that or whatever. And what happened next was amazing. So people first responded and drove saying, thank you so much, that was very, very helpful. Which indicated to us that they trusted Neil. Now instead of being a salesperson, he was a trusted advisor. Which is of course kind of the point of all education based marketing. But what happened in this context was really, really interesting because now they also amended that by saying, what do we do now? And we found that we had literally created this situation where all these guys had taken what they learned for free, gone out, introduced themselves to girls, and then were just kind of left standing there going, well, shit, now what? So imagine this. You got a guy who's like terribly insecure, but he gets this information how to go introduce himself and he goes up and he goes, hey, how's it going? My name is Joe Polish and I like to dress like a chimpanzee and eat bananas all day. And the girl says, oh, hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. And then the dude's just standing there staring at her because he doesn't know what to say now. So what?

He actually does that? That's exactly what he says.

Who wouldn't want to be with a man like that? Of course, is nobody really. It's like catnip. So anyway, you know, all these dudes go out and they're, like, introducing themselves to girls. The girls are not running in terror. But now they don't know what else to do. So that taught me. Oh, so incidentally, now they're coming back to us saying, please give me more. Right? So the best process I can teach for mass control is that your customer is at point A and he wants to be at point B, you know, so in this example, point A is living in mom's basement, no girlfriend, Point B has a girlfriend. All of those guys have to go through a series of milestones in order to get to point B. In this case, they got to learn how to go up and say hello to a girl. They then have to have a conversation with her and make the prerequisite small talk, you know, about dressing like a monkey and eating bananas all the time. Then they have to ask for the phone number. Then they got to call the girl on the phone and have a phone conversation that's somewhat intelligent and ask her out on a date. And then they have to go out on the date and not like, you know, spill wine all over her or be flatulent or whatever the common mistakes are when you go out on first dates, you know, not that I've ever done anything like that. Personally, I'm way too suave. So all those dudes have to do all that stuff. So what we learned. So if we could just give them. Get them part of the way there from point A to point B. If we could just get them to the point where they, like, introduce themselves to a girl and asked her phone number, they would do anything to figure out what to do next, you know? So the whole marketing process was 100% pull. It always is with me. It's always like, hey, here's this cool thing. And they're like, damn, that's awesome. Okay, now what do I do? Oh, will you do this? Damn, that's awesome. Now what I do? Oh, will you do this? Damn, that's awesome. Now what I do? Well, you need to do these three things, and I'd be happy to teach it to you in this course I got. And it makes the resistance to selling very, very low or the resistance to buying very, very low. And. And also really doesn't count as being sold to because they're coming to you asking for the help. So it's completely different. And as a result of constantly practicing that type of marketing, you decommoditize yourself in the marketplace because you're always providing value where everyone else is just trying to sell. So it's always about getting that person who's in your prospect base closer to their desired outcome, and they associate you with that, as opposed to the other guys who is all about just pulling that or pushing that customer into their, you know, into their bank account, basically. So it's a pretty different way to do things, but it really, really works. Well.

That'S amazing, because when you really think about what. What you're saying is, any process, anything that any business goes through, there's multiple steps, usually to get from point A to point B. And if you can just get them in motion and start them on that path where they've already, you know, you're showing them, hey, just step over here. And that works. And then they say, well, now what? Step over here. And it's continuing to work. It's going to be very difficult with that momentum to not want to continue all the way through.

Exactly. So they're always coming. If you can have them. If you can have them saying, thank you. What now? You're gold.

You know, I mean, those are magic words, aren't they? Thank you.

What now? That's it. And if you can come to them, if they can come to you in a context of saying, I need help. And then you say, okay, here's some help. And then they say, thank you. What now? It's even better.

I like what I'm hearing.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I don't think we should talk to him about anything else. I think we should just end it with thank you.

I think we should continue by saying thank you. What now?

What do you want?

Okay.

Yeah, thanks, Frank. What now?

You're interviewing me?

That's exactly it.

Yeah. You continue the interview and hopefully just send me money arbitrarily in exchange for nothing, but happily receive nothing as if it were some sort of blessing set over a string.

Everywhere. We've all come to a point where our marketing knowledge right now is at its peak, where every day we learn new things that really solidify all the stuff that we've learned up till now. And we know I'm a better marketer this year than I was last year. I'm sure both of you guys are too. And so what were some of the things that got you to this point? Like what were some of the things that, if you go back to when one of the questions we always love to ask people is when did you first fall in love with marketing? When did you kind of get this, this inkling that marketing could be the answer?

Well, I've got the inkling that it could be answered after like rejection number 9 billion as being a cold call, door to door credit card machine salesman to small businesses in the sweltering heat of making Georgia summers in your leisure suit. Yeah, this is how smart I was. I wore a black wool suit in the summertime making Georgia driving a black car because I thought it would make me look older. I thought, well, surely I'm going to have to look somewhat respectable, you know, if these people are going to entrust me with their merchant services where I think in reality I just looked like a sweaty mafia person. I think I looked like, you know, a very well dressed meth addict or something. It was so hot, dude. It was horrible. And all the, you know, everything was like, the businesses were just far apart enough to where you have to drive from one to the other, but they were just close enough to where the air conditioning would never actually get cool in the car. So you're just, it was just, it was horrible. So I learned that if I could sell something without actually having to talk to anyone, I would have it made. And so then I started, I learned how to do that and then I learned. So there was always a series of big problems, right? So it's like problem number one was making sales without talking about. So I said, well, how do I solve that? And it was through marketing. And then it became, well, how do I sell stuff through marketing without being like all the other guys? Because in my opinion, most people who are in marketing either have no idea what they're doing, thank God, which means a huge demand for guys like us. It's great. So may all those people continue not knowing what they're doing. You know, it makes us look really smart, but they're also the ones who do know what they're doing, are really pushing so people will buy from them. Just kind of like, because there's no other alternative. So my mission then became, well, how do you market and preserve and nurture the relationship? And even more importantly, how can you make every marketing piece also contribute to this intangible bank account overflowing? With goodwill that you have, because I think the higher your invisible goodwill bank account is, the more money you make in your business. So it became that and then it became good Lord, you know, if you actually talk to people and do the goodwill stuff, you could really make a fortune. So it's, you know, then it evolved into kind of how Dan Sullivan talks about your, your average paycheck size. You know, it's like, you know, you do realize you probably have a significantly higher average paycheck if you did xyz. And for me, it was learning how to create a situation where I did talk to people, but had them coming to me saying, please for the love of God, take my money. And this continue this awesome relationship. So it's been an evolution of that, huh?

What was the very first thing that you did that switched from being that cold call, you know, dropping in on people and solving your first thing, which was being able to sell without talking to people. What was, what was the first kind of marketing thing that you tried?

The first marketing thing I tried is I bought Corey Rudolph. I bought his Internet marketing course back in 1998 or 99 for $275. I was so broke, I had to split it with my partner Joel. He was my partner in our little credit card salesman business, you know, so he paid whatever 275 was divided by two. I paid the other half. Then he kept, he listened to the tapes and I took the manuals and the manuals talked about this is obviously the full stamp, illegal and everything. The manual said, look, you can buy this software from us that'll go out and you can type in a keyword like, I don't know, online business or something. It'll go. And it'll find every website in Google or Yahoo or whatever it was at the time ranks for that. And it'll get their email address off of it and then it'll send them an email. So I did that and I had it send an email saying, hey, if you want to take credit cards on the Internet, I can help you call this number. And it worked kind of okay. And I sold some credit card machines and I didn't talk to anybody. And I was, I was hooked. Well, I did talk to people, but they called me, you know, so it was still like it was the equivalent equivalent of them calling from a yellow pages ad or something, but a step below that because it was an unsolicited interaction in the first place, you know, so it was still kind of a semi confrontational, unpleasant, non friendly conversation. Where they weren't like, oh, please take my money. But at least I wasn't going around in the sun sweating my ass while cold calling. So then I discovered information marketing. When I bought, sight unseen, I paid $10,000 for the license to resell Dan Kennedy stuff as basically as an affiliate. And I placed an ad for magnetic marketing in a, in a credit card industry newspaper called the Green Sheet, which I'm sure is still published. So if you're a credit card salesman, there's. It's like a trade magazine basically. And I put a little classified in there that said something like, never cold call again. You know, discover how you can avoid cold calling for the rest of your life, essentially. And you call this number for a free report. I mean, classic Joe polish, you know, 800 number stuff. And damn if they didn't call. And I would transcribe their addresses and I would send them the magnetic marketing sales letter written by Dan and. And holy shit, they bought it. And that was, that was when I was just, you know, total, total bliss and ecstasy in terms of being incredibly excited. And that, that really never went away. I've never lost that excitement and passion for selling information. And now, of course, I prefer to sell consulting because I think I do better work in that environment. But that was the first one for sure. A little, you know, just like the infomercial says, a tiny classified ad.

Tiny classified ads, yeah.

Damn if it didn't work, you know, And I remember it sounds the way.

You'Re describing it, you know, I've told the story of the first time I sent out a, you know, direct response postcards and getting all the business reply cards back and getting this pile, this stack of them. There were 11 or 12 in the very first day's returns. And I still, when I think about that, I get this giddy feeling in my stomach because I literally was. I had a visceral reaction to it. And imagine the same thing for you when you run this ad and people are calling in. You must have known. And there's nothing like that first response that you get from something that you're trying as a brand new marketer. It's just this rush of excitement and giddiness.

Dude, it was just unbelievable. And I had the same thing occur years later after being very successful in marketing when I decided to take a hiatus from, from selling anything that had to do with marketing. And I wanted to prove myself I could sell anything. So I created a course on how to train your dog. And it was an audio course that I recorded personally Because I used to work with, I've worked with about 300 dogs, believe it or not. I worked for a company called Invisible Fencing and I was the dude that installed the containment systems and trained the dogs and stuff. So I made a little audio product on how to train your dog and started selling that through paid advertising, sending them to direct response sales letter online and then they would download my little audio course on it. And that, that actually grew to a million dollar a year business, ma'. Am. But that first, I remember having like my first hundred dollar day or something, you know, and I had had hundred thousand dollar days before that in my other business. But that first hundred dollar day was more exciting than the hundred thousand dollar day of the old business because it was validation that holy shit, this stuff just plain works. I literally created something out of absolutely nothing, you know, and it really is out there.

You know, that's actually, I think a very important first place to get to is that moment where it completely validates that this does work. Until someone has that realization moment. I see so much resistance to marketing, to getting it to whatever. And I think you know what you were talking about delivering results in advance. I mean, as much as you can deliver results, results to yourself, like quickly, immediately. You know, Evan talks about speed of implementation. I mean anything just to prove, to give you the confidence that you're going down the road.

I just realized too, because when you talk about how so many times people want to get all their ducks in a row, they want to get everything straight, get their whole funnel built and all this stuff. But I'll tell you, there's nothing more motivating to get your sales letter or your free report written than to have a stack of voicemail messages or email requests of people who are asking for it. You know, that's, it's like I always encourage people to kind of, you know, lay the track as you go. You don't have to have the whole track built, you just have to have enough to get, you know, keep it going. You have to be ahead of the train kind of thing, you know. But if you, if you place an ad or send some postcards and people reply for your consumer awareness guide or your free report or whatever it is, and you haven't got it written yet, that'll encourage you to write it pretty quick.

You will in fact write it pretty, pretty fast. You know, when I first taught mass control, that thing, God knows how much that sold, I've forgotten now actually, but it's millions, millions of dollars that I sold that product somewhere in the 10 million dollar range. And when I first taught it in late 2006, I think it was 06 or 07. I forgot when I first came out with that thing. I sold it to my list and really I'd been running my dog business, you know, which is million dollars a year, and I was happy with that and I really didn't have to do anything, you know, I mean that was a total lifestyle business because I didn't talk to anybody. It was relatively autopilot, you know, just Google sent the traffic from their AdWords and you know, the sales letter converted what it converted and then people would download the thing. And I built this list of 300,000 something dog owners. I had their name, their dog's name, the dog breed, you know, 40 something thousand customers, pure idiocy. Never sold them anything on the back end, you know, which I just, I still just, I really wish I had because I would have a million more dollars plus in my bank account or at least a million more dollars worth of useless crap in my home. So anyway, I remember, I remember when I sold Mass Control, I had all that was working really well, but I wasn't paying attention to finances when I renovated and remodeled the home that I had bought. So I spent all my tax money that I'd saved up on the damn home renovations and I was like, holy shit, I need to sell something fast and generate about $300,000 to pay this tax.

I remember having that whole conversation or.

Then I'm gonna have to dip into the savings, you know, and I don't want to dip in the savings and all this kind of stuff. So I created the first week of Mass Control. It was a four week course, but I created the first week that was all before I sold it, and then created the rest of the weeks after it had been sold. So I was creating week two while they were creating week number one, and that was a lot of volume went through that. And I think a lot of people do that. And also I think that's an okay way to do something because you're able to accept feedback from your customers dynamically before you create the next thing. Now obviously that doesn't work in all circumstances, but if you're doing something that's spaced out digitally and you know, you can give them what they paid for initially and then deliver everything on time, but dynamically according to what you know to what the feedback is. I think it's really better in many circumstances than trying to have everything perfect from the get go. It provides a Better customer experience.

Yeah, agreed.

You know, Frank, thoughts on advertising? A lot of businesses are kind of anti advertising. Me and Dean talk about this quite a bit that a lot of people brag that oh, I don't have to spend any money on advertising to generate business. And I think it's kind of like a really sort of stupid statement because if you can spend a dollar and bring in five or three or two or a dollar and a half or whatever, it's just, it's a good way to grow your business. And many people write about marketing but they couldn't write an ad that works if their life depended on it. So what are your thoughts on advertising?

Well, first of all, business who doesn't want to advertise and my book doesn't exist. Like I could really just care less about them. I don't want to even talk to them, see them or think about them because they will never ever become my client. And in the unbelievably rare series of events that would lead to me mistakes mistakenly accepting them as a client, they would be a complete pain in the ass. So to those people I say great, live long, prosper and please keep not advertising because your competition will hire someone like me and then, you know, later, later on you can maybe go to work for them as the general manager or something, you know, so that's great. Enjoy. I think it's the single most valuable asset and skill that anyone could cultivate. And I know, Dean, I've heard you say this as well. The best skill that anyone could learn how to do is to turn $1 into 2 or 4, 10 through advertising. And you know, there's never ever, ever, ever, period, etc going to be a shortage of advertising opportunities, you know, ever. And there's so few people that actually know how to do it. And it's not really because it's difficult, hard. I mean it takes a while to get good at it. And I don't know how long it takes to master it because I wouldn't consider myself a master at it. But I've done really well at being pretty good at it. And I think that's all you got to do, you know, is just be pretty good at it. And your gold. I think that aside from being able to deliver on your promises to your customers, you know, obviously that's the prerequisite. But everything else in your business aside from that should be secondary to your ability to advertise and turn it into profit. The end. There's no such thing as recession. And in an instance where someone can advertise for profit. It doesn't exist. You literally control everything about your business. You control the customer you want, customer you don't want, how much sales volume you're going to do, how much vacation time you're going to take, how many stores you have, whatever. I mean, it's 100% at your fingertips. When you have that ability and it's not particularly difficult to do. Usually it consists of you going to the public and saying, hey, you guys want these? I got them. Here's how much they are. Here's why you should buy them from me. Call this number.

Right, exactly. And you know, the greatest thing in the world, like, we live in such amazing times right now that we truly can live and create like alchemists. I mean, you talked about your dog business when you talk about my stop, your divorce, publishing. And those are things that there's not even a real physical thing. I mean, it's ideas, it's words on pixels. You know, it's like you're not even selling. There's no diminishing supply of it. There's no, you're not even actually selling the thing. You're selling a picture of the thing. You know, and you could just turn.

A well written description of the thing.

I mean, that's really what it is. It's just, you know, it literally is ideas plus money equals more money. I mean, it's like, you know, that's really what the idea. What you have is if you can find the, find the person. I mean, even the simplest model is using either Facebook or using Google AdWords, driving them to a. Driving them to a sales page and letting them buy and download right there. I mean, it's. If you can figure that out, it's quite a life.

Yeah. The good news is it's not that hard to figure out. The bad news is it takes a couple passes. And that's why there's so much opportunity, because so few people were willing to go out and try it and tweak it when it doesn't work. Which part of me thinks there's the theory that, you know, like obviously in ilofmarketing.com this podcast, we're preaching to the choir. I mean, everybody on this loves marketing or else they wouldn't be listening to something called I love marketing.

You know, so we would call marketing lovers.

We are, in fact marketing lovers. That's right.

Not unlike chicken and shrimp lovers.

I would. Not at all unlike them. In fact, the two are not, you know, there they go, hand in hand, really. So probably Would you get about 50,000 people or something listen to these things? I think you told me you get up to that many people listen to these podcasts. And I think it's fairly safe to say there's one, at least one listener who's like, man, all this stuff makes sense. And, you know, I'm going to try that one day, and they never do. And I think the reason. Another reason that people don't try, aside from being afraid that it's going to. That they're going to fail and look stupid and lose their $50 advertising budget for the day or whatever, is that they have this fantasy that they can achieve freedom by mastering marketing and learning to turn advertising into profits for their business or someone else's. There's all these different business models they could do, and they're afraid that if they try it and it doesn't work, then that means the dream isn't real, and that means there's no hope. And that means this thing that they've been thinking about and fantasizing over and participating in, at least as a, as, you know, a spectator, doesn't exist at all. So they would rather sit on the sidelines, talk about it, and keep buying education and getting ready to do it instead of giving it a shot in case it doesn't work the first time, you know, and again, it's probably never going to work the first time. You know, what kind of person is going to hit 10 out of 10. I've never met anyone who's. Who every single time works the first time. You know, I write duds all the time, but I only lose a couple hundred bucks or something when I do because I test it small, you know, But I've always been fascinated with that, that I think it's this fear that the fantasy will vanish in the event of a failed attempt, you know, which again, is really for the people who are willing to accept reality, that is probably not going to work the first time, just like everything else in life, you know, think that just leaves way more opportunity for us, which is awesome.

Well, you know, I would agree. I would totally agree with that, except for one thing, but I'm not going to talk about that, Frank, with. With all of the stuff that you have gotten gone through in order to learn what it is, you know, I mean, it's easy once you've put time into it. But a couple of things. One, you know, how did you learn all this? I mean, how many books have you read? And, you know, how do you. How did you educate yourself sort of in the beginning, I mean, what does it really take? I mean, some kind of layout. I mean, I know it's different for all people depending on intelligence and what they consume and all that, but I'd like to give the listeners, especially people that are sort of new into this, what are some realistic expectations and then secondly, how do you continue to educate yourself and learn and stay on top of today so that have some idea of what got you to your knowledge level currently and how do you maintain and what do you pay attention to? I'd like to get some of your thoughts and perspectives on.

The first thing I did was I kind of got lucky in this regard. But anyone could duplicate my luck and that is I found something that involved marketing and what have you and I found a model of that that I liked a lot. That noise you hear is my heater coming on outside. So, you know, right now especially, you know, I'm always thinking in terms of the Internet, of course, because that's where I learned all this stuff. So within the little world we call Internet marketing, there's God knows how many ways to turn the Internet into money, right? Or to turn marketing into money. You could do CPA stuff, you could do affiliate stuff, you could be a blogger and you know, be published as a blogger and you get paid to endorse things that way and so forth. You can sell information products, you can be a consultant, you can do mobile marketing. There's a gazillion things, right? So the first thing that I did was I, I kind of got married to one real early and that was information marketing. So everything I learned was in the context of selling a result based product such as how to, you know, how to train your dog or whatever, as opposed to I'm going to check out all these various models such as how to drive people to a zip code submit form and drive traffic and arbitrage and all that kind of shit. I just never paid attention to it. So I was very, I had a lot of tunnel vision in that regard. And of course, you know, now we all know that the same marketing principles you would use to sell a book is the same marketing principles you'd see used to sell a house or a car or you know, cosmetic surgery practice or whatever it may be. So there was that. And then I chose teachers that I just really resonated with and didn't really bother studying anybody else. So I didn't read any books. I have literally never ever read a business book with the exception of Dan Kennedy's. No BS Time Management and Dan Kennedy's no BS Wealth Attraction. That is the only author on the topic of business that I've ever read. I read Tony Robbins on a little Bit of power book, which I don't think really count technically as a business book. I did not go to college. I didn't graduate from college. I was technically enrolled, you know, but I was a quasi professional rock and roll guitar player throughout that. And I got kicked out. So really I just studied Dan. I studied Gary Halbert and I wrote a lot, I tried a lot. You know, I mean, the way you get, the way you become a championship boxer is you get in the ring and you fight like a motherfucker and you break your nose and you get a cauliflower and you look like shit, but you end up being real good over time, you know? So I just wrote. I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. And I would read, you know, I'd read other people's ads and I would write ads that I would read a Dan Kennedy ad for a book and I would try to model that ad to sell my dog course, for example. So I also tried to become really good at transposing advertising principles from one niche to another, you know, but that was it for me. That was all. I studied a little bit of Jay Abraham stuff, but he was. He was harder for me to understand because I just resonated so well with Dan. So I don't think, I mean, as much as this doesn't serve me as for being a guy that sells marketing information or I really don't have any products for sale now, but maybe I will eventually, you know, I don't think it's necessary to go out and buy gazillion marketing products. Just find someone that, that you like and study them and do what they say and keep tweaking it until it works, until you can prove that their methods don't work. And usually if you can find a lot of people standing behind this guy saying, I did his methods and they work pretty good, then you know they're gonna work. It ain't him, it's you if it's not working, you know, so if anyone comes to me and they say, I tried Dan Kennedy stuff, it doesn't work. Like, dude, it ain't Dan Kennedy stuff, buddy. It's you. You can't write or you're not following the directions, or you tried it once, you know, and got 10 visitors to a website and didn't sell anything and gave up. Same thing with your stuff or Joe's or mine or whatever and that was it. The second other thing was I surrounded myself with a group of peers and that's been in multiple environments, has been through coaching programs I participated in and it's been in mastermind groups like the one that I'm in with you, Dean. And I surrounded myself with those guys and fed off of their energy, which I think anyone can do. So if there's a mastermind group or coaching group that someone could buy where they really resonate with the people who are leading it and they resonate with the caliber of people that's, that are also in the group, I think that's always a very, very good decision because you know, the scheming with other like minded people and the discussion with them about hey man, what are you doing? Oh, how'd you get that to work? Well, do take a look at this. What do you think of this? Oh, I should do that. Okay, cool. I think that's invaluable and that'll accelerate your success as well.

It really is.

Exactly. Well, what you know. So what do you, what are your recommendations for people listening that want to learn, you know, other than listening to, of course the best podcast in the world, which is. I love marketing. You said you don't have any more products. I mean, if someone wants to get something from you, what, where do they get?

They don't, you know, what do they.

Watch, what do they do?

I'm currently just servicing a small group of clients and I've just had in the past 48 hours, 62 people apply to pay me $10,000 a month each for consulting. So I don't have anything for sale right now. I might put a book out or DVD out later but you know, I'm out. So really just go to Joe's side and buy some stuff from him or from Dean's or something. Or email me@frankfrank kern.com if you're a million dollar plus business that if you like my kind of stuff then maybe we can work together and help you as a consulting client. But that's, you know, I don't really teach through products at the moment.

Really makes you wonder what sort of.

Sneaky stuff it is. Very sneaky, but it's wonderful.

Yeah, I know. Creating products, you know, I really enjoy. That's the thing about figuring out what you like, you know. So for me like making a tape set or something, it's pretty cool. I've never had a tape set but you know, Homestuck, course, whatever was pretty neat but you know as long as I hope my clients don't listen to this. I would really sit around and brainstorm and help a million dollar plus business that sold something I thought was cool. I would do that for nothing. I like it. It's fun, you know, to go to a guy that's. I'm going to have a client that was doing $50,000 a week and not following up, you know, so for me to sit and talk to this dude about the follow up process and be like, dude, you could probably double that by simply implementing this four part follow up process by email, you know, that was great to me. I really liked it. It wasn't work, you know, so it's all about what you want to do. You only look once, you know what I mean? So I don't think there's any point to pigeonhole yourself into being one type of person and providing one type of service.

You know what we should do, Dean?

I mean, we know Frank personally. You know, we can call him up and he'll, you know, he'll do things within reason if we ask him to do and all that sort of stuff and more you and him. Because you guys are.

I'll endorse. No, no, no. I mean, you know, help him sell a lot of us and hang out with famous people for nothing. If you want me to do that. Yeah, right.

Well, that's, that's what you should do. I mean, that's helpful. But we should actually, Dean, we should pay Frank like literally legitimately pay him in this. Sit there and he'll, he'll be in a quandary because it would almost, he'll be like, you know, he's got a certain level of, you know, ethics and he would, you know, want to deliver. And you know, his whole, the whole Frank Kern shtick aside, I think he's a really caring, concerned individual that wants to see people succeed in everything. But there's like a lot of passive aggressive sort of behavior that I see him display towards you when you guys are together because I think it's like some deep seated male attraction thing that he's, you know, you guys aren't really kind of clear on, but I think it would be really smart for us to actually pay him in then say, dude, what do we do? What do we do? Because I think that would be really valuable. So in all seriousness, Frank, if someone wanted to hire you, how would they go about doing that? I mean, what do you, you are for hire people? Because, you know, there'll be people that will listen to this and they'll be like, I want to learn from this.

Okay, well, yeah, well, first of all, never go about this method of acquiring clients. A first piece of free advice. I wasn't expecting this, so I didn't come up with an easy to remember URL. But I've written a letter that tells you how my consulting program works and that's@frankkern.com letter PDF and the L is capitalized. Or you can email me. My top secret address quite literally is frankrankkern.com that comes right to my iPhone. And you can email me with the subject line, for the love of all that is holy, please take my money. And I'll send you a link to the consulting letter so you can can read it if you have forgotten that URL and there's an application to fill out and if I think that we might be a good match, then I'll call you and I'll say, well, you know, here's how it works and here's what I think we could do. What do you think? And you'll either want to do it or not. Either way is okay with me. I like talking to people, assuming they're the right people, you know, so, yeah, cool. But in terms of my having a, my having a, you know, a hidden, deep seated man love for Dean Jackson, I've never tried to keep that a secret.

We're pretty open about it.

Yeah. I mean, what, what? I mean, haven't you noticed the giant life size tattoo of Dean's head on between my shoulder blades? I mean, that's.

Yeah, it's true. You know, I, you know, you figured I would have, that would have been.

Well, I mean, you do watch me.

Shower out through the window, but still.

How can you miss that?

I'm having, I'm having a hard time just even coming to grips with it myself.

Frank.

I'm actually quite envious of it. I mean, it's really my thing, so. God, you know, final question I have for you, Frank, about mistakes. What are just some mistakes that people make that just undermine their ability to have success? Like, I mean, you've talked about some of them, but what are the.

Dude. I mean, the biggest one I see lately is people don't plan stuff out. So I'll see people. And this oftentimes can be really ultimately the fault the guys are getting advice on. So people will say, oh man, oh, I'm going to sell stuff online, I'm going to go out and get a bunch of traffic and they'll actually finally get the courage to Muster up some money and spend a couple grand on sending traffic to a website. But they'll send it to a website where the sales process wasn't actually thought out properly. So they'll send them to an opt in form that doesn't have the best copy on it, or even if it might. And then when the person opts in, the sales letter says coming soon or something, and they'll think, well, I'll just capture the lead and then I've got a list and then I can sell them things later. So that's the worst one. The second one, which is even a bigger crime than this, but it's, it's in the people I deal with. I don't see it as much is they don't actually have a good offer. They never really stop to consider what, what do my people want? You know? So I think Dean had asked me, like, if I was sitting with a brick and mortar business, what would I tell them to make money? And the very first thing I would do is I would say, well, what's your very. The coolest thing you could do for your customer base that would also provide you the greatest amount of net profit? And that's question number one. So I rarely see people actually pondering that, like, what's going to have the highest profitability index to me personally and correspondingly have the highest value index to the marketplace. So they don't structure the offer properly and then they don't market to the right people. So they're, they're selling the wrong stuff altogether or they're putting the right stuff in front of the wrong people or the wrong stuff in front of the right people.

Amen.

Cool. Cool.

All right, Dean.

Dean.

We are. We're really much past time, so what else?

That was fantastic. I really appreciate everything you've shared with us. It's nice to finally have you on. I love marketing.

Well, I just, I'm a huge fan of the show. Send a lot of people over here as well. And a big fan of Dean Jackson, but not so much Joe Polish.

I feel that way too. That's funny.

That's good.

I'm gonna go cry right now.

I'm gonna really go cry right now. No, Frank, thank you very much. Really appreciate it and yeah, peace out.

It was fun, Neil. Bye, everybody.