No B.S.

February 23, 2024

Dan Kennedy is the Founder of Magnetic Marketing, an industry leader providing cutting-edge, market-tested business mentorship, ideas, solutions, and support to maximize the success of entrepreneurs and business owners. As one of the most revered marketing advisors globally, he is the Direct Response Marketing Strategist at NO B.S. INNER CIRCLE, where he has taught his Magnetic Marketing System to over 6 million people worldwide.

Dan spoke on the famous SUCCESS Tour, earning on average $100,000 per speech and sharing the stage with President Ronald Reagan, Gen. Colin Powell, Johnny Cash, Larry King, and Mary Tyler Moore for nine consecutive years. He has authored 32 books and been interviewed or featured in 300 business magazines, trade journals, and newsletters, including Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Entrepreneur.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[4:19] Top insights drawn from 12 of his no BS books
[8:13] Dan unveils the true value of social media beyond just marketing
[13:53] Why Integrated Marketing reigns supreme over multichannel strategies
[15:55] The secret to communicating your value and knowing your time’s worth
[22:36] Why you should create a Personal Operating System for better interactions
[22:40] Unlock the power to successful businesses and personal productivity
[24:47] The surprising mutual benefits of ‘rules of engagement’

In this episode…

As an entrepreneur, you may have the most innovative and high-quality products or services in the market. But without effective marketing strategies, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

The Best of No B.S.: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Anthology author Dan Kennedy says marketing is an essential component of any successful business. Whether new to marketing or a seasoned pro, it can help you take your business to the next level. However, many entrepreneurs lack the deep understanding of consumer behavior and market trends needed for efficient marketing. Dan’s insights on the latest money-making marketing strategies help entrepreneurs take their businesses to new heights.

In today’s inspiring episode of the Timeless Marketing Podcast, Brian Kurtz sits down with Dan Kennedy, Founder of Magnetic Marketing, to discuss how entrepreneurs can thrive through marketing. Dan talks about The Best of No B.S. book and the checklists, direct marketing and social media, time management and setting boundaries for entrepreneurs, and brand building through direct response marketing.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Titans Xcelerator.

Titans Xcelerator is a private mentorship program for direct response marketers.

It is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business.

And you don’t need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars either.

Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind.

And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed.

As an added bonus, you’ll receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one.

The bottom line: you don’t have to grow your business alone.

If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to BrianKurtz.net/help

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz, your connection to insights from some of the top direct response marketing minds on the planet.

Brian Kurtz 0:16

Hey, it’s Brian Kurtz here, host of the Timeless Marketing Podcast. Today’s episode is a clip from one of the two-hour calls inside Titans Xcelerator, my private mentorship program for direct response marketers. Before we get to that, I have one question for you. Do you have a marketing insurance policy? If you don’t, you need one. And that’s why I created Titans Xcelerator, which is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business, the bottom line, you don’t have to grow your business alone. And you don’t need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars either.

Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind. I know because I hosted a group that was over $20,000 a year. If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to briankurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [slash] help. And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed. As an added bonus, you’ll receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one. Again, if you want to see if Titans Xcelerators are fit for you with no obligation. Go to Briankurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [slash] help. And feel free to email me directly. I respond to every email with questions about this episode. Or just to say hi, brian@briankurtz.net.

Now onto today’s episode, everybody’s got something to offer. And then, you know, when I went before he sold his stuff to click funnels, I remember going on his old site. And I was amazed at the volume of material that he’s accumulated over his career. And it’s, it’s like, it’s astounding now a lot of it you could say is repetitive. A lot of it overlaps. It’s a lot of it, but it’s still original content. And original content is said in the eyes of the beholder. You know, it’s like, what’s original when, you know, we’re talking about, you know, someone who has been putting out valuable marketing information for as long as he has. So it’s and so this book that he’s gonna, that we’re going to talk about today is our repeat this when it comes on, but those of you are here early just to get the preview of the preview, but it’s his best of no BS, which are his you know, 12 different no BS books.

And they’re all together. In this one book, 575 pages, we’ve got about over 100 people on the call. This is my Titans Mastermind by Titans. Titans Xcelerator Mastermind group. We’ve been on the phone for a half hour telling stories about you and assaulting you like crazy, which has been wonderful. And there’s been some really warm stories, and we’ve decided that you really are a teddy bear. And I’m really happy that you’re here that you’re doing well and that you’ve got a book to talk about.

Dan Kennedy 4:09

Well good. Thank you and thank you to everybody with warm stories and held with everybody with the insults.

Brian Kurtz 4:19

I knew you would say that. So we’re going to talk about your new book today which is The Best of No BS: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Anthology is excerpted from 12 Different no BS books. It spans work from 2004 to the present. I mean, you are a man of action. You say it’s a book to use, not just to read. And you specifically wrote down in the cheat sheet you gave me that there are 17 checklists in the book.

So I want to ask you right up front and then we’ll get into the weeds a little bit in some of the sections of the book. But I want you to just start off with something that is a big takeaway, what is the single most powerful checklist in the book? And why? And you don’t have to say everything that’s on the checklist. But what do you think the top checklist in the book is?

Dan Kennedy 5:21

Well, it’s See, that’s a situational answer. Okay. You know, the old agent say, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. So I would say that when a person is ready, the right checklist arrives. Cars 10 Different people could go through this book, look at each of them, and read the details around them. And each person would find a different one, most relevant to where they are, and what they are dealing with at the moment.

So there is a time management checklist, for example. There are a couple of very specific marketing-related checklists. There’s a trust and influence checklist. So they are to use a currently popular word, they are diverse. There’s one and just about, I think, every major section of the book. And well, let’s dive into the book then.

Brian Kurtz 6:41

Okay. So we’ve got it’s, it’s, it’s fine. It’s 575 pages. And it’s all actionable. I want to start from section one, which is the Irish I read. I read Ken McCarthy’s forward, which I think is interesting, because he made a comment in there that Dan is underappreciated in the world of online marketing. Now, I will say not by this group, I can say that for a fact. Because everybody here does online marketing. Get everybody here is a Dan Kennedy follower in the best way you have a lot of fans on this call right now.

And not just fans, people who have followed your advice, and changed their businesses and their lives. So basically, that it’s all direct marketing, whether it’s online or offline, when you spoke in Cleveland, for my mastermind, you said that you think the title was, you know, I’m offline marketing and an online world and multichannel marketing. So in part one, you talk about direct marketing, and no BS direct marketing, but also no BS guide to direct response, social media, which is one of the BS books that you did with Kim Walsh Phillips. So I guess the question, it’s a softball question, I know, but it’s one that I’m going to insult you with, you know, what the hell do you know about social media?

Dan Kennedy 8:13

So, the most important thing I know is that it is just media nothing more and nothing less and for the most part, nothing different from any other media in the way that you would use it to obtain money. Every time there is a new media or a new collection of media, there is a lot of noise about it. It is now antiquated, being quoted old rules and methods and that is always wrong. And some new media like social media and subsets within it.

Try to argue that they have a unique culture and that the culture change surely pre preclude you doing results required marketing, which is not my alternative name for honest direct marketing results required marketing. But this is much like arguing geo culture that you can’t go over to England or Japan and advertise and Mark Get as you do here, or vice versa. And I’ve consistently proven that to be entirely wrong.

Social media also brings with it an argument about new metrics. Which is really just a synonym for new BS. Because, you know, when Ogilvy said only to mail order people actually know what they are doing.

Yes. While he’s still right. After all these years, the only metrics that matter, right are measurable metrics. I too desired results might cost per lead, cost per sale, return on dollars invested. I recall when Mickey and I’m gonna forget his last name was CEO of one of the apparel companies. We saw a little clip of a staff meeting where his marketing people were besieging him about new metrics, that essentially he was an old timer and trying to hold this new media accountable by old metrics.

And his answer was, that argument is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as I write out your paychecks in likes, and viral for forwards is acceptable instead of writing it out in dollars. So the most important thing I think, to know about any media, all media, including whatever the newest granulation of online or social media is at this moment, is if you can get 2 million people to watch you to work on TikTok, God bless you. However, that doesn’t matter. unless you can prove that that generates leads directly moved from there to your funnels and platforms that you convert into dollars.

And that’s, and, you know, I know that he’s vital, my marketing life divides almost evenly between free and internet and post-internet. And nothing about what I do has actually changed in the post-internet world, then in the pre-internet world, other than me having to have more arguments with more people about ROI. Now, you mentioned multi-channel, I would term the approach I would prefer even to that is integration. Mm hm. And so I view all of this as having given us additional media to integrate.

Brian Kurtz 13:53

Yeah. In my book I did O…to O…to O…, which is online, offline and online. Toggling in both places, because it’s great, what you say is the most dangerous number in businesses, one, one medium is most dangerous. And just being online or offline is dangerous. And I agree with you, I think the integration is much better. I’m going to stop using multichannel, I’m going to move to integrated integration. That’s good.

If anybody has questions, they should raise their hands. And we’ll get to questions as we get closer to the end of the 45 minutes with them. I just want to cover a few more things in the book that he thought would be the most not just the most interesting, but the ones that would probably resonate the most. And what he said to me I know the section in section five which is about time management and ruthless management of people in profits. We talk about that in this group a lot then about out, not just gatekeeping your life, but protecting your you’re protecting yourself from everybody. And you know how terrible I am at that you always accused me of, you know, letting people into March and all of that. And then you say that’s the way you want to live your life, that’s fine.

But the way you live your life has been so productive because of the way that you’ve talked about ruthless management and the idea of time management for entrepreneurs being kind of the secret weapon. So on page for a team, you say, if you don’t know what your time is worth, you can’t expect the world to know, either. So let’s talk about successfully communicating your value to your customers, clients and patients, I think this alone will be a useful lesson for anybody who has either heard you speak or read your writing or not.

Dan Kennedy 15:55

And I’d love for you to talk about that. So you have to say you have to know first. And a lot of people don’t know. So if you ask somebody what their income or wealth spin off goals are, for the year, many people will have a number 10. Ask them how much each hour of their time has to be worth for that to be achieved. Most of them will not have any answer, they won’t actually have thought about it in those terms. So you have to know, and there’s an exercise in that section of the book for getting to a number, then you have to be able to communicate it effectively to those around you. The principal means of communication is demonstration. So it’s a process. So if you are for example, easily accessible. That’s perceived as eagerly, except for festivals. And it is devaluing and diminishing.

And so a lot of people think that by seeing Johnny on the spot and always responsive, or in two seconds and being happy to receive no, but I called Brainfart texts and emails 16 in the same day from the same person, every time they have a brain fart, they send off a communication that you never have to respond to. If you let that happen to you, not only are you damaging your own productivity, you’re ruining your position, I think that maybe he is going to gain favor. And in the very short term it may. But it is also getting away from the perceived value of you and your time to your clientele, and to your market. So by your process, you speak to others about the value of your time. I had a very recent experience with a new client but a longtime lifer, going around for a long time, but only recently bought some time and services and became a client.

And I’ve had to teach him properly, value time, twice now, not because he’s a bad guy. Not any of that. But some people are slower learners, you know that others have but because the frameworks there, because the foundation is there. It’s been easy each time. So I’ve been able to say, look, this is the second detailed, complex question you sent me asking for an immediate response. But that’s not our arrangement. And we have booked and scheduled time and are engaging in mission creep. Having said that, I’m going to give you an answer, but this cannot become a habit. And I immediately got a thank you. And an apology. A, I don’t want to be the guy guilty of mission creep. And I won’t let it happen again. If you haven’t laid the proper foundation for that, then you try and rein this in. Without that foundation, you will understandably pissed that client off. So do you teach people to ask vendors, clients, customers, patients, the world at large, you teach them how to interact with you.

And if their interaction with you is not to your liking, it’s disruptive if it’s counterproductive, if, at the end of a given day, you like to run away to a desert island where there’s no electronic reception. If you see that’s all on you, that’s not on them. And so having rules of engagement, within what I call a personal operating system, is important for both reasons. Your own performance, our own peak performance, and the perceptions you convey to the people around you.

Brian Kurtz 22:11

To create your own worth. And, you know, I have someone who’s been guilty of not, you know, not setting those parameters as much. I’ve done it more because of your instruction, then you’ll be happy to know. But I probably need to like that guy. You. You were coaching, I probably need the same coaching.

Dan Kennedy 22:36

And you don’t be shy. I had a call earlier today with Ben Glass, I think cubed. Oh, man.

Brian Kurtz 22:40

Yeah, that is Ben’s awesome.

Dan Kennedy 22:43

And early on 90-95. I think when he first started to pay attention to my stuff. He was like the only lawyer who imposed no inbound calls taken off calls pre-scheduled by appointment. Discipline in his practice. And his staff predicted Armageddon. He even did it with judges. And he said, Now, however many years later, that is combative math without a pen and paper, but it’s it, it’s become an if not common. An often-used approach doesn’t shock people. It doesn’t even shock judges. Because actually, it makes sense for both sides of the equation.

The rules of engagement, just like any other contract or any other agreement, protect both parties against all sorts of misunderstandings and grievances, and complaints. And annoyances, like phone tag, and add all of that. And you actually enhance their productivity as much as you do yours. In many cases. My own experience has been that by modeling this to others who at first don’t like it. discover that there’s a benefit to them, and then they turn around and begin to use it.

Outro 24:47

Thanks for listening to the timeless marketing podcast with Brian Kurtz. Visit briankurtz.net, and click podcast at the top of the page for a full transcript and show notes. If you’re interested in working with Brian personally inside of Titans Xcelerator, go to Briankurtz.net/help to see how Titans can help you grow and scale your business. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [slash] help.