A masterclass conversation (Darcy Juarez interviewing Dan Kennedy) about the realities of the information-marketing business. Dan emphasizes that while the field can be lucrative and relationship-driven, it demands high personal discipline and strict adherence to deadlines; it also faces increasing competition from high-quality free content (e.g., YouTube), which has eroded some product-focused niches (illustrated by a Gene Kelly example).
We're selling what they can go on YouTube and see for free. Yeah. Now you can make an argument that our content's a little better, and it probably is if you're paying for it. But that gap is not as wide as it once was.
Hello and welcome to this month's masterclass. My name is Darcy Juarez. I'm here with Dan Kennedy and really excited about this month. Many of our members have asked for a conversation about this with you about information marketing. And I'd really like to start with the reasons why people should not be in that business.
Okay. It can be a great business and it has many advantages, which I guess we'll talk about. I think I coined or popularized the term is really a replacement for publishing. And publishing is really all product focused, transaction focused, whereas the information marketing business is really customer focused, tribe organizing focused, and in equity focused, not just income focused. But if you want to know why somebody shouldn't, most of those reasons are the same reasons they shouldn't be in any business. In some respects, the info marketing business just magnifies the same problems. Right. So the business requires a lot of discipline for it to work and for you to succeed in is a business, for example, that is rife with deadlines. So products are sold, subscriptions are sold, events are sold, the next coaching call is coming up, etc. And they're not flexible. Yeah, you really can't decide that you're going to just be late with stuff this month because you got invited to go on a golfing trip for a week. The business does not work that way. Now you can do it from just about anywhere. So you can take your laptop and go on your golfing trip and just at the end of the day, not go to the bar or get up in the morning an hour early and, you know, it's manageable. But it's a business that requires a great deal of discipline. And if you are unwilling to operate as an organized, disciplined individual, it's not, you know, it's not a business that you want to be in in many cases, not all, but it is a business that very much revolves around personality and relationship more so than products and services. We are often, very often running very successful, very profitable information marketing businesses in information categories where there is an enormous amount of cheap and free information available. So. We're selling what they can go on YouTube and see for free. Yeah. Now, you could make an argument that our content's a little better, and it probably is if you're paying for it. But that gap is not as wide as it once was. So, for example, early on, the answer to this was the free stuff is all crap. And it was an honest answer. That's not true anymore. And some businesses have been really hurt by it. A portion of their information marketing business, for example, has been really hurt by it. Gene Kelly, a longtime member the portion of his gun hobbyist business that revolved around micro courses on DVD. How to clean the bullets for the.357 Magnum from 1812. You know, that stuff that. That business is almost dead because the hobbyists were really, just to entertain their egos, have made a bunch of YouTube videos that teach the same stuff and they're actually pretty good. Yep. So we are often in that position. Yeah. Okay. And. And so what's the difference? Well, the difference then is us, the person or people and the relationship they create with the customer so that the customer has a preference, a profound preference for getting information about a particular subject from me or from you versus getting it from anybody else.
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