These Marketing Notes On Frank Kern’s Promotional Strategies Course Reveal What It Takes To Ravish Open Into Ecstasy The Seasoned Cougar Buyers of Your Market As Well As The Skittish Virgins

Hey You,

It’s Lewis a.k.a. Nerd #2.

Fuck the Midas touch.

When it comes to learning email marketing strategies I want to see proof that I don’t have to be lucky, talented, or connected to make them work.

I want someone to show me exactly where to put my fingers and what to do with them in order to get the money gushing and flowing out of my perfect prospect’s bank account into the constantly hungry mouth that is my bank account.

That’s exactly what you’ll see Kern does in this course in the notes below . . .

The core fundamental of making any marketing work is rooted in Dan Kennedy’s triangle model he’s been using forever that Kern refers to now. For your marketing to produce results you need . . .

The Right Message Matched To The Right Market At The Right Time

You have to be tuned in to who you’re talking to. You want know specifically what they’re moving towards and what they’re moving away from.

One of the biggest lies people wanting to be internet marketers buy into is that if you have a big list that you’ve built off of launches, JV’s and what not, that you’re set.

What most people don’t talk about is the fact that you’re golden for all of about 40 days. After this the responsiveness of that list starts declining.

One of the reasons this happens in this niche is that these customers are on a shit-ton of lists. So they’re seeing a ton of similar offers so nothing really stands out in their minds.

Second, people mostly opt into your list from other people’s list just to get some free shit. This leads to good results but not great and this is why this isn’t the most fertile ground for your business to grow.

You can tell which list segments or markets are best for you based on the results of your message. And the focus of this course is mainly focused on improving the quality of your email messages within campaigns and these are comprised of . . .

· Subject Line

· Click Through Rate

· Landing Page/Offer

All of these need to be on point in order for your email campaign to produce results.

How To Determine The Quality of Your Traffic

To prove the potency of your list source you measure the responsiveness to your email campaigns.

And the most important measurement is with your subject line a.k.a. your open rate.

And Kern’s data has proven through measuring his results that these joint venture launch lists ARE NOT the best lists to pursue.

The Most Desirable Place To Grow Your List Is Through PAID Advertising

What Frank has  found is that the internet marketing buyers freak out about having to spend money on campaigns yet they’re totally willing to go out and buy the next $2,000 product that gets launched with much less resistance than if someone asked them to go spend $100 bucks on Facebook ads.

1^st Reason You Want To Use Paid Ads:

There’s a slim chance of these people being on everyone else’s list. Think about it. They wouldn’t click on an ad if they were already getting emails about your new product from other internet marketers. This means you potentially get to be one of the first in line and the first person to enlighten someone usually gets a special place in a buyer’s heart.

2^nd Reason You Want To Use Paid Ads:

People have to take a series of actions to get to you. So say with a Facebook ad, this person had to get out of Facebook mode, click, see your landing page, read/watch, enter their info, re-confirm on double opt in lists (he says he uses double even though Eben Pagan and Ryan Deiss don’t), and all of this equals quite a bit of shit people had to do to even have the privilege of getting on your list.

The best open rates he’s ever had have come off lists he built off of PAID ADVERTISING.

He gets more clicks from smaller paid traffic lists than the ginormous lists he builds for free with joint ventures.

If you can’t sell what you’re selling with paid traffic, you’re doing something wrong.

The key is to be able to buy traffic and convert that traffic at a profit, its game over. Your money worries are over. And this program is all about.

Your Subject Line Is God – Everything Hinges On This Little Bastard

If your subject line doesn’t cause a person to click, they’ll never see the body copy of your email. If they never see the body copy, they’ll never see your landing page. If they never see your offer, they’ll never give you money.

If your subject line doesn’t work, nothing else will and you may as well not even built the list.

For his auto-responders he uses Aweber, icontact, and infusionsoft. He primarily uses Aweber and icontact. At the time he shot these videos he was in love with Aweber over icontact because he felt they were getting better delivery AND it’s cheaper.

Now he’s showing you his Aweber stats to confirm for you that his paid traffic is getting the highest open rates of all of his little segmented lists he has in here. And he doesn’t just toss everyone in the same bin. He has separate lists for paid traffic vs. JV traffic.

The subject line . . . “DAMMIT! (lol)” . . .  to his paid list had 43.7% open rate. He thinks this might be the best he’s ever gotten.

The subject line . . . “worst sales letter EVER” . . . had a 36.9% open rate.

He believes the reason this is so is because people who went the “Paid” route are highly motivated evidenced by all the hoops they’re willing to jump through in order to even be able to see the email.

They feel like the email is their reward for the work they did so it’d be dumb not to open it.

He made of point of showing how he messed up and sent a campaign to the wrong list of 15,382 people under his cousin Trey’s name and got a higher open rate when he noticed his mistake and sent the email to the right list of only 10,357 people under his name.

And what’s crazy is those 10,357 are part of the 15,382 and he still got a higher open rate numerically.

He’s doing to this hammer home the point that Paid Traffic sourced lists kick ass. Get ready for the market to be a thousand times more competitive now. Hahaha! And oh yeah, he loves him some Facebook because he says Google has turned into assholes when it comes to buying paid traffic from them.

Subject Line: “DAMMIT! (lol)” – Why Kern Believes It Works

For people who don’t live in their inbox they’re checking email a lot less and they’re doing so with people they’re friends with so they’re trading dirty jokes, pictures or just talking shit to each other.

This subject line meets them in this mode.

“SAVE $10. SITE WIDE NOW” doesn’t. You want to be conscious of the mindset people are in within the media you’re meeting them in.

Another reason this works is that people are drawn to drama and disaster and follies in other people’s lives.

Think about how people rubber neck a car accident, how bad news sells in the press, and how popular the show America’s Funniest Home Videos is where the winning clips usually involve someone getting their testicles, face, or ass bashed. We’re addicted to witnessing other people’s mishaps.

Use this. Just don’t make it old and stale because you used it too much. Think sprinkling vs. hosing.

The Email Body Copy Itself

I’m looking at three emails here and one commonality I’m finding is that they all range from 5-7 short paragraphs, most of them one sentence to a paragraph, one of them being the link to take you to the landing page.

The other thing you’ll notice about Kern’s emails is that they’re all in the tone of how someone would talk to their friends. Your friends don’t know shit about HTML and the ones you know that do, aren’t sending your personal emails via HTML.

More often than not, they aren’t prolific writers, or they’re good at writing but they’re too lazy to do a lot of it just to send you to a website. And so their message is just bare bones conversational gives a glimpse of why to click and the link.

They don’t try to drive you to a message with scarcity.

Another thing friends have in common is that they usually do their best to make each other laugh. Not all people do this because some people are just too damn scared of not being seen as funny, but I’d venture to say 9 out of 10 people love giving the gift of laughter.

So if you can be funny, do it.

Kern in this email says, “I just sent you a video about an hour ago but the email thingy said it was from my cousin, Trey. It was actually from me. Sorry. I’ve only been doing this “Internet thing” for 12 years so I’m still a little rusty lol”.

No badoom-siss jokey jokes – Just conversational in context joking, poking fun at himself.

The one thing he does different than your friends will though is he makes one of the sentences, the link. So instead of http//www. allthecameltoesyoucanhandlealldayeveryday.com/dkalkj432900390223b he just hyperlinks the sentence as such . . . Go check this out you filthy pervert lol . . .

In the “worst sales letter ever” email, Kern actually made the first sentence of the email a hyperlink to the site he wanted to go to. Here’s what the email looked like . . .

Come see the shittiest sales copy ever . . .

It’s especially horrible because there’s nothing even there for you to buy lol.

But hey, there’s something waiting there that you may or may not benefit from seeing and this terrible, no-good, absolutely rotten sales letter shines fluorescent light on it revealing all the purdy as well as the ugly.

And if you’re incredibly lazy like me, rejoice in the fact that’s it’s only half a page long and will take you 90 seconds to read, even if you were in the slow reading group at school and you move your lips as you read like I do sometimes.

Go poop on the salesletter here and holla at me if you’re interested.

Frank

Here’s a loose template of how to combine the powerful elements from both of these winning emails . . .

SUBJECT: Ugliest (your whatever) of all time

This has got to be the ugliest (your whatever) ever created.

It’s butt-ugly, I mess up a few times on it, and it’s completely unprofessional.

And you still want to go see it because it’s incredibly important if you want to (whatever you provide solutions for).

So instead of never getting it out to you because I got paralyzed by my obsessive compulsive desire to be perfect, I damn near drove myself crazy making this available in its raw, far-from-perfect awesomeness so you can have it now instead of never.

Go make fun of me here.

Hit me with the good, the bad, and the ugly feedback when you’re done.

Coco Beware

This is just generic copy but you can see the rhythm that he rolls with – the pattern if you will. Three links, self deprecating humor, conversational, subtle commanding language, short and to the point.

Here’s a follow up to the email above you could use . . .

SUBJECT: DAMN IT TO HELL! (lol)

Remember how I sent you the ugliest video yesterday?

Well, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder desire to be perfect all the time was totally shamed when it saw how people like you don’t give a shit if the video is perfect or not. All they care about is that it brought them one step closer to (whatever it promised).

Now my O.C.D. wants to be more like you.

And because this isn’t a beauty pageant, this video got a WAY higher response than I ever guessed it would and people are shaming my O.C.D. even harder by spreading the video around to all their friends.

This ugly ass video is serving as an exorcism for my O.C.D. demon.

See what everyone is fussing about here

Talk soon,

Coco Beware

Another subject line that he used was “FYI”. This got him a 54.2% open rate and a 24.9% click through rate.

Here’s an example of how the rest of this email was laid out (Pay attention to the first sentence here and every one you write because they show up next to the subject line in email clients like Gmail) . . .

SUBJECT: FYI

Hey – decided to do a sex seminar involving a weird and slightly controversial topic.

And because porn + learning = awesome I made a video that explains it here.

The Link To Your Porn Learning Video

There’s no charge so go on ahead and peep your little eyes out. J

Coco Beware

See nothing scarcity oriented or douchey. Not long. Conversational.

Here’s another template to test that I adapted the same exact structure and theme from an email he sent for his cousin Trey . . .

SUBJECT: the most pleasurable and profitable business in the galaxy?

I’ll give you a hint: It ain’t porn.

In this videoyou’ll discover that 47% of the people on the Forbes 400 list are in some form of this business.

And you’ll probably be stunned to find that my cousin Twondale, made his first million in the same bidniz. (Which he started with $600).

Go see the video here. It ain’t porn, but you’ll still like it.

Ray Ray

Meet Your Perfect Prospect Where They’re At

One thing to stay laser focused on is the relevancy of this message to your list.

You always want to keep in mind who you’re talking to. If you’re talking to coffee snobs, the subject line in the email above could be changed to “the most pleasurable and expensive cup of coffee in the world?” The question mark at the end of the subject line leaves things open. Adds intrigue.

Beyond the subject line, the intrigue continues with the first line saying it’s not what you think it is, making you want to open it even more.

Also if you can find studies to prove what you say, you want to include your findings in any compelling way you can.

How Not To Be A Douche

So now we know the importance of the list you’re mailing to and the weight that your subject lines carry and that paid traffic is the most receptive source of traffic you can get.

The definition of being a douche in this context is to hammer your list to death with the same exact offer. You see this happen during launches quite often – people broadcasting to their list en masse.

Here’s How to Promote Hard and Not Burn Your List Out . . .

When you’re doing an email campaign, the simplest way to do this is to remove the names of people who’ve already opened your email and re-email everyone left on the list.

Aweber makes this easy. You click one button titled “people who did not click” and lets you set up a new segmented list to send to. (SIDE TIP: He’s also sold on the idea of mailing at 8:00 A.M. Eastern time.)

Kern showed his Aweber stats where he did this the day after the first email and got 2,000 + additonal clicks, 5 hours later (shot this video same day he sent the email) that he wouldn’t have had had he not re-mailed to this segment of his list.  

Here’s my adapted version of what Kern sent the next day . . .

SUBJECT: HELL TO THE YEAH

Just uploaded this for your viewing pleasure.

Gives you a front row seat to how I shoved a cool $93,000 into my bank account last week.

Go ahead and take what you see and copy and test it with my blessing.

Here’s to your shoveling a fortune into your bank account too!

Hacksaw Jim Dugan

PS. Don’t worry about being squeezed for an opt in. I made this just for people on my list and by the fact that you’re seeing this, you’re already there, so no worries.

You see there’s no complex copy formula here.

This isn’t an elaborate process that’ll take you forever to master. And when he did this with his icontact list, to un-opens, he got 18 more sales on this day, the day he’s shooting the video.

That’s $18,000 dollars more in the door from just changing your subject line and re-mailing and he’s not pissing people off who already took action by opening or opening and buying.

You can also customize emails to people who’ve opened and not clicked through or to people who’ve clicked through and not taken action also.

For this campaign he’s talking about he made a special video for the people who watched the initial video he sent but didn’t buy. He got an awesome 23% click through rate on this list of the lesser quality JV traffic list.

For the people who take action on this mailing, he’s going to just send them a follow up message with a link to the order form telling them to get on it because the class is closing.

You anticipate everyone not responding and you think ahead on how you can reach out to them and not piss them off.

These are some examples of how to mail and follow up without pissing people off.

What To Do Now

Can you see yourself writing fun, light-hearted 5-7 sentence paragraph emails now?

Remember, these messages were working on COLD traffic from paid ads. So shut up if you’re saying “Oh, he can write these short fun emails because he’s talking to people who he has a relationship with already or have a trusting relationship with the person endorsing him. Stop looking for ways to not use this strategy today with your email list.

You especially want to test this out if you feel like you have to write 8 mile long emails like Jay Abraham in order to get great results and you’re taking forever to finish a message and send it out.

Test this “quick to market” strategy. Let everything you’ve learned from these notes today prove itself wrong before discounting it. I think you see the common sense wisdom in what’s laid out here and I wish you the best in deploying it in your business.

As always, please feel free to share your feelings or your results with me in the comments below or in a personal email.

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne a.k.a. Note Taking Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd

PS. Since you’re with me now clear the hell at the end of the post, I’m guessing you’d love to have every single page of the marketing notes I’ve taken on Frank Kern’s Promotional Strategies Course. And you’d be wise to go here now and put your hands on every single one of these ninja email marketing solutions here . . .

Related posts:

1. Marketing Notes On How To Use An Email Auto-Responder To Make Money
3. Marketing Notes from Jay Whites Auto Responders Made Easy Course

See How You Can Apply This Small Business Marketing Strategy Tony Robbins Used To Overcome The Skepticism of Total Strangers and Blast Past Being a Nobody, To Becoming a Great Somebody Known and Worshiped World Wide

Hey You,

Leave the pack behind using what you learn here...

It’s Lewis a.k.a Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd.

Have you made it you’re life’s study to figure out why people do what they do?

If you answered “No,” and yet you want to increase the number of people who say “Yes,” to you, then I highly suggest you keep your mind open to the discoveries made by a man who has for decades now, made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars based on what he’s discovered about the key factors that get people to take steps to improve their lives and what they do with their thinking that keeps them a prisoner to mediocrity or worse, poverty.

If you make a living selling products or services (or aspire to someday), you’re in for a real treat because you’re about to see the slight tweak Tony Robbins made that allowed his Personal Power Infomercial – to become one of the greatest sales presentations ever delivered on a mass scale.

You’re going to absolutely love seeing how his extensive and expensive research found the answer to the nastiest objection your prospects will ever have.

I found this story for you while listening to one of Tony’s Power Talk tapes and I’ve brought this wisdom here. So let the show begin . . .

The Secret Reason People Don’t Buy, That They’ll Never Ever Admit To You

The human brain is always working hard to avoid pain. And it’s on a constant quest for pleasure.

After trying and trying and trying, and failing and failing and failing some people link up in their mind something like, “Getting excited, getting worked up to go for it, equals pain so I better not even try. I better stay right where I am now because at least I know I can deal with this.”

This leads extraordinary people to settle for mediocre lives.

You don’t want to fall in this trap but it’s so easy, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever been at some point in your life where you felt jaded and you tried so hard and you gave your all and it still didn’t work? And you ended up feeling like, “Why should I even try?”

Well, I have and that’s where Tony was years ago because he felt like he’d given his all and failure was the reward. Why even try? Why even do this? He started adopting the power of negative thinking, the power to destroy his life and it didn’t take long.

The Poisonous Effect Some Innocent Negativity Can Have On Your Life

It took about 120 days for him to destroy everything he’d created in 4 years.

It doesn’t take long at all when you indulge in negative thinking. It only takes a little bit of poison to kill someone. You don’t need to drink six gallons of strychnine. Just a sip and it’s lights out.

This is why you’ve gotta make sure and stand guard at the doors of your mind every day. You want to direct your mind rather than just falling for what’s dumped into it by the environment around us.

This is critical because what we think about daily determines how we feel, what actions we take, therefore what we think about every day is shaping our destiny.

You know what’s scary? Sometimes the poison is offered by a friend. One of Tony’s original mentors, Jim Rohn, said, “Tony, everyday you’ve gotta watch your mind, you’ve got to watch what’s getting in there. Watch who you surround yourself with because friends can poison you.”

Tony thought this was kinda harsh. Jim said, “Tony you’ve got a cup of coffee here and your best friend comes by and puts some sugar in your coffee when you’re not looking. What’s gonna happen?”

Tony said, “Well, I don’t drink coffee but if I did, I guess it’d be pretty sweet coffee.”

Jim said, “That’s right. What if your best friend, even if by accident, dropped a little bit of poison in your coffee?”

Tony said, “I’d be dead.”

Jim said, “That’s right. Lesson #1: Watch your coffee! Lesson #2: While you’re watching that coffee, make sure that you put into it what you want and you don’t let other people do it for you.”

You’ve gotta watch your mind. You’ve gotta put something positive in your mind, something that’s gonna help you construct a greater quality of life.

If you don’t do this consciously, what will the news provide for you? What will the internet provide for you? Negativity is constant just like gravity and you must resist it in order to have the muscle and the will to shape the quality of our lives.

13 Random Strangers Off The Street Put Millions Of Dollars Into Tony Robbins Bank Account

Here’s an example of where our society has gone . . .

Tony surrounds himself with so many positive people that sometimes he forgets. But all he has to do is turn on the TV. Or, think about this experience he recently had.

His television show “Personal Power” was the most successful infomercial that had ever been done. It’d broken all the records and he was really proud of it but they wanted to come out with a new show and he wanted to make sure they reached even more people.

So he thought, “Why don’t we bring in a focus group – a group of people who don’t know who we are and lets have a professional moderator really find out what they think of our show and find out if we’re reaching them or not and figure out to impact even more people.”

They proceed and now he’s in Marina Del Rey in a room behind a two way mirror and nobody knows he’s there. Tony watches the moderator interviewing 13 people and he learned some AMAZING lessons.

Behold The Tony Robbins Smack Down

Tony figured that based on the response they had to their show that these people were all gonna love his show too. Not the case.

When the moderator interview them in advance, one guy happened to mention, when they asked about personal development information, if they were ever involved in seminars and stuff like that, the guy mentioned he’d been to seminar of someone else’s before and listened to some tapes.

You should’ve seen how the mob jumped all over this guy. They started prodding at him implying that he was dependent on somebody else and how they didn’t need it because they were already confident and balanced.

It was incredible the amount of emotional negativity they dished out towards this man. Then the moderator asked the group if they’d heard about Tony Robbins. One person in the group had heard about him, read his book and was enthusiastic. Other people were bothered by that.

Then they showed the film and after doing so the response was pretty amazing.

They had everyone fill out a piece of paper and on it was a drawing of people talking with each other and the moderator told the group, “These people are talking about the show that you just watched. Please write down what they’re talking about.”

Next they gave them a chance to score Tony and other people on the show on terms of their sincerity, their vitality, their passion, etc. Well, Tony got really high scores and so he assumed that when the conversation started, everyone’d be really enthusiastic.

They. Were. Not.

One man stood up and said, “I love him. I want those tapes. This seems fantastic. It seems different than everything else.” As soon as he did, you can imagine what happened. Other people in the group jumped him saying, “What are you crazy? Don’t you know these people are trying to rip you off? They’re just trying to make money off of you! This is TOTAL SCAM!!!”

They went on and on and on about how if this guy bought these tapes, he was gonna get ripped off.

The moderator asked, “What do you mean? Why do you think it’s a scam?”

They said, “All those people on there talking about their results are all PAID for their testimonials! Those people are saying that stuff because they got paid to do so! That isn’t what really happened for them!”

Tony couldn’t believe that out of the 13 people, that 7 of them thought they were paid endorsements when not one of their testimonials was paid for.

Then the moderator said, “How can this guy get ripped off if the tapes come with a money-back guarantee and if he doesn’t like them, he can send them back and get a full refund?”

The group shot back, “You’ll never get your money back. That’s a total lie. That’s a total scam too! There’s no way!”

They carried on and on and on saying “Well if this guy is so successful, why is he teaching other people? Why isn’t he just keeping this for himself?”

The Light Bulb Turns On In Tony’s Delusional Mind

Tony thought, “This is AMAZING! I had no idea people thought this way.”

If he’d used his intelligence, he would’ve remembered that seven years ago that was how he used to think which was ironic because one of the ladies there was real emotional talking about how this must be a rip off saying, “Yeah, I believe that Tony Robbins is sincere but he’s a LIAR!”

This caused Tony to think, “WHAT?! How can I be sincere, AND be a liar?”

She said, “He’s sincere and I believe he really cares and all that but he never lived in 400 square foot bachelor apartment in Venice.”

By the way, they did this focus group about 10 minutes away from where he used to live. 2516 Pacific Avenue, Venice, California. Pretty amazing.

The bottom line is she went on and on and on and she was so intense and she was so angry, so upset even though she’d never met him, and he was taken aback. But after being taken aback he got real curious.

He thought, “What is this dynamic? Why are these people so emotional?”

The moderator worked with the group for almost two hours. After conversation after conversation after conversation asking each person if they’d see any value in these tapes at all, one older gentleman said, “No. I’m retired and I’m happy about it,” with a terrible frown on his face as he’s saying this.

So after a while, the moderator asked, “What would convince you that these tapes were at least worth listening to and then sending them back for your refund if you didn’t want them?”

They said, “We need some real evidence that this stuff works – not just paid testimonials!”

The moderator agreed with them and told them he’d be right back. He left the room and walked into where Tony was sitting and asked him if he wanted to talk to these people.

Tony said, “I guess so. These guys are pretty mean but okay.”

Tony Walks Right Into The Shit Storm

And so Tony walks into the room and you should’ve seen the state change when they saw him.

There was the gasp of disbelief and they all got excited saying, “It’s him, it’s him,” nudging each other. Tony sat down and said hi to them and they said hi back and smiled back at him being very nice after they’d just beat the shit of him and his show.

Tony said, “I want to thank you all for being here because you just gave me an unbelievable education. See this mirror here? It’s not a regular mirror. On the other other side I was watching and listening to your feedback on my show. Fortunately I don’t take it personally but I had no idea people could be this pessimistic. All those people you see on the show are sincere. No one was paid for their testimony. The bottom line is that they’re all sharing because they got results. They’re all sincere.”

Then he turned to the woman who said he’d never lived in Venice before and said, “2516 Pacific Ave. Apt. 3A” Check it out on your way home, it’s only 10 minutes away.”

He said, “I needed to hear this. I needed to hear your responses to this because my goal is to reach more people. Some of you said I’m doing this to make money and you’re absolutely right. I’m a business man. I make money but I get to do something that I love to do that makes a difference in the process. If I wasn’t making any money, I wouldn’t be reaching any people, so yeah, certainly I want to do well but I really want to impact people and I’m not impacting you guys. You aren’t hearing my message. I want to reach you. Help me. How can I reach you? ”

It’s was fascinating.

They said, “Well, tell us more about what you do.” And Tony told them what he did and why he did it and sure enough in about 5-1o minutes they’re telling him, “This is what you should do. You should be on that show. Don’t have as many of those testimonials because you’re really great. We really like you.”

And Tony said, “But I’m the same guy who was on the infomercial.”

They said, “It’s different having you here in person. Now we know you’re real. You’re not like all those other scams.”

They kept talking about all those other scams and he listened to that. To the one man who was retired, Tony asked, “Would you never get some tapes like this?”

He said, “I would’ve got them years ago. Years ago I used to get tapes all the time. I used to go to the seminars. I’d give my all and it wouldn’t work and I finally got tired of trying to give my all. I don’t need that. I’m happy the way I am,” with this terrible scrunched up look on his face.

Tony thought how interesting this was that this man kept giving, kept trying and it didn’t work and it didn’t work and it didn’t work and it dawned on him!

The Great Wall Of Skepticism That Keeps Your Conversion Rates Low

He thought about why these people were so emotional, so angry about trying to prove this stuff wouldn’t work. Tony finally realized what it was. These people had been disappointed so many times that now they’re deathly afraid of getting excited.

Their brain tells them that if they get excited, they’re gonna take a fall – “If I get all jazzed and pumped up about this thing, what’s going to happen to me is what always happens to me – it’s not gonna work out and I’m gonna look like a fool! I’m gonna tell my friend about this great business opportunity and then the company goes under and my friend is gonna hate me forever! Or this guy’s gonna get me thinking I can really succeed and I’m gonna go out there and make some investment or put myself on the line and really stretch myself and then I won’t pull it off and then I’ll really be a failure and I’ll feel really shitty so I’ll just stay right here where I am and not do ANYTHING and watch my life drift away.”

He turned to these people after he’d listened to them talk for awhile and he said, “You’re paid to be here and you don’t have to take anything from me, you can get up and leave at any time but I think the real reason you guys wouldn’t order these tapes in not because you didn’t believe in the guarantee, not because you think these people are lying. I think it’s because you guys are afraid to get excited. I think you’ve been disappointed so many times that you’ve given up and . . .

I think the real reason you wouldn’t buy these tapes is because you don’t believe in you.”

Tony looked over the room and of the thirteen people, 11 are shaking their head, ‘yes’, and the other two kinda saying they don’t agree with him.

Tony tells the 2 people, “You don’t have to agree with me, but what do you think?”And after contemplating deeper they came around and said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

After the focus group did Tony’s show, they did one for a diet product. And the one woman who’d been so against Tony’s show in the beginning, when asked later if she’d use the diet product, she said, “No, because the truth of the matter is, I wouldn’t succeed at this until I used something like Tony’s product and learned to love myself more.”

It was unbelievable the totally different view this woman began to look at things from.

As they were closing out on time, Tony said, “I’ve kept you here longer than we were supposed to but I’d like another 20 minutes with you and I’ll pay you for your time or you can leave, or I can give you a set of my tapes instead.”

And guess what? Out of the thirteen people there, guess how many people wanted the tapes? Every. Single. One.

Only one person had said they wanted the tapes before talking with him and even that had shifted when the mob turned on him for saying so. But there was a problem. Tony only had twelve sets of tapes with him.

So he said, “One of you can’t have the tapes right now, who of you would be willing to wait to get the tapes?” The older guy said, “I’ll wait to use them because I probably can’t benefit from them that much anyway.”

What was really fun was that by the time Tony was done speaking twenty minutes later, after he’d got a chance to really chat with these people and as they’re leaving, the older gentleman who said he was gonna wait for his tapes, fought with another woman to get the last set of tapes so this woman that really wanted them had to wait because this old guy took the tapes and bolted with them.

Tony got several things out of this eye-opening experience . . .

One, he got to see how negatively conditioned, pessimistic, and skeptical a random group of Americans could be.

Second, he saw why people would be negative.

He never understood why before.

He just thought people were being negative and he’d make people wrong because of how hard he worked at being positive. He realized this negativity was oozing out of their fears.

He realized that when someone is negative, they’re fearful. It’s the same thing that happens when someone is throwing their big ego around – it reveals how insecure they are.

These people have tried things and they didn’t work and they have a lot of references-experiences where they tried something and it was painful now their brain has linked up and says, “You get excited, you really go for it, you’re just gonna get disappointed. You’re not only gonna get financial pain but you’re gonna get pain in the form of shame.”

And this is why those people were so emotional about making Tony’s product wrong. They didn’t want to believe because they were afraid to believe. And all of this was unconscious.

Third, he learned from the old guy, that everyone still wants to dream.

Everyone still wants to make it happen.

Everyone still wants to slay the dragon and be the hero by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. EVERYBODY WANTS THAT!

And everybody somewhere in their gut believes this is possible for them and they’re waiting for someone to come along and kick them in the ass and show them how it’s still possible for them to dream and be heroic.

And now he’s got more reinforcement for his mission and what he does.

He tells this story to remind you of the kind of environment you live in. You’re pretty positive if you’ve read this far. But if someone around you is being negative, they’re not wrong, they’re not bad, they’re not a negative person. They’re fearful.

What are the consequences of being a fearful person? What are the consequences of looking for what’s wrong instead of what’s right? The consequences are the destruction of your dreams.

What Does This Mean To You and Your Customers/Clients/Prospects?

This means it’s up to you, barring you bring the truth, the fuckin’ ruckus, the light to your universe of potential buyers, to show them how your service, your product is gonna allow them to sign the death certificate of that fear of “I’m too lazy to see this through to the end.”

As ugly as it is, you’ve got to believe that the people who can keep your business afloat are simply scared children in grown up bodies looking for the approval some certain somebodies in their life. Could be a spouse, could be a brother, could be friends, could be the 5th grade teacher who told them they were just a shit spark off the old shit flame and that they’d never amount to anything.

But that somebody is out there and if your perfect prospect can’t see how spending time and money with you will allow them to “Show Them”, then I guarantee you’re making less sales than you possibly could.

Anatomy Of An Info-Product People Love To Buy

If there was a Hall of Fame for information products based on longevity and profitability, I guarantee you “Personal Power” would have a spot in it.

And what’s cool is that this product’s blueprint for success isn’t hidden in a vault from you like the design specs for next Apple product. It’s out in the open for all to see.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Personal Power product, it’s 30 or so hours worth of content broken down into Day 1-30. You’re only supposed to listen to one a day, unless of course you’re an overachiever and you want to take a weekend or something and blast through a huge section of it.

Here’s three components of personal power that have contributed to it’s legendary success . . .

1. Matches Learning Format They’re Familiar With

The first thing I believe contributed to the success of Tony Robbins’ Personal Power course was that the end of each days session, you had action steps to take that once you did them and felt the momentum shift for the better in your life, you felt you were getting your money’s worth and that it was only going to get better.

Another thing that was different about this, that I believe allows a person to suspend the doubt they have of themselves was that Personal Power is stretched out over thirty days under his supervision on each of the days.

People don’t like to be handed a box of 20 DVD’s, 3 big ass manuals, and left to their own devices. Think of how this completely goes against the way they absorbed information from the time they were 4 years old all the way till they were 18 years old and 4-6-8 more years for the people who went to college.

Nearly everyone on the planet is trained that the path to success with a topic that’s unfamiliar to you has to do with having a teacher who serves you bites of information one day at a time and then at the end of the lesson asks you to take some action that is manageable.

Of course some kids can’t hang, even with a system that demands very little of them, but the majority can. The same is going to be true of your pool of perfect prospects. They all can’t be winners but if you show up in their world and you don’t make success with your system achievable for them because of the structure, you’ll have the people who should be winning, losing, which of course leads to you losing money in referrals, refunds and future sales.

Another aspect of this that helped people along was Tony taking on the position of “Stern but loving parent”.

If you didn’t do the action he’d asked you to do the day before, he’d break your balls but he’d do it in a way that allowed you see he was doing it to help you, not just to control you. Tons of parents and teachers are guilty of doing the latter under the guise of helping you, but even kids can see and feel through this.

If you’ve ever had a teacher you loved, you know how important this aspect was in you wanting to do whatever you could to avoid disappointing them. If you want your buyers to get results, they’ve gotta feel the desire to get your approval for a job well done.

2. Make The Transformation Believable

Tony never had to sell the Personal Power as “Go To Sleep and Wake Up Fixed”.

This product actually breaks all the rules of marketing that say the majority of people gravitate towards fast, easy, and cheap products. And yet, since the early 90’s he’s kept rolling it out year after year after year.

It’s an evergreen content just as useful in the 80’s as it is now (hidden lesson here) and everything you learn in the course has the ability to completely transform how you show up in the world but he did a marvelous job of meeting you were.  

At the beginning, the action steps were simple, but not insignificant. He knew you were just getting your ass of the couch so he didn’t make it impossible for you to take the first step on the journey to walking proud through life on your own two feet.

And if I remember right, Tony made this one of the selling points during his infomercial. He let you see in your mind how this was different than a book or a Nightingale Conant program. He let you know how this course was built to be action-oriented towards progress – not perfection.

3. Build For Maximum Impact And Maximum Profit

It’s been so long since I’ve read Tony’s 9,000 page book, “Awaken The Giant Within” but I’m guessing that most of what’s in Personal Power, is in there.

But which product can you clearly charge more for? That’s right – 30 CD’s.

Think about this too. When he first started selling these in CD format, a CD bought in the store went for $15.99 or more and this allowed someone to see the logic of why they’d be paying hundreds, not singles, to get access to this information you couldn’t just run to the store and buy it(another hidden lesson – give people limited access to your product to boost it’s value).

So now not only are you having a greater impact on your buyers by stretching out your lessons making them easier to consume but you’re also having a greater impact on your bottom line.

What Other Marketing Master Has Followed The Guidelines Above And Taken It To the Next Level?

One information marketer who’s used similar steps with his high-end information products is Eben Pagan.

Eben recently re-released Wake Up Productive and if memory serves me correctly, the product is broken down day by day and he called it the  “New Years Wake Up Productive Class”.

Look at The Guru-Blueprint Course – which was broken down into two days (even less than Personal Power) a week over the period of a month, or longer, I can’t remember. And did you notice how he labeled it a course, with classes scheduled on specific days -  something people who’ve attended or know what a college is, are familiar with. 

If you’re going to sell information products, you need to remember that’s is completely unnecessary to ever start with the blank slate. There have been successful models rolled out in the past that have done the job of conquering the mightiest objection a person could ever have to buying your product or a service.

Follow in the foot steps of Personal Power or Eben Pagan’s products and you’ll be light years ahead of the majority of people you’ll ever compete with in your niche. That’s a guarantee.

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne a.k.a. Note Taking Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd

PS. Dan Kennedy helped build an informercial for one of the Tony Robbins Personal Power releases and I’m about 99% sure he influenced the decision to bust it up into 30 days worth of content instead of just one big “modulized” data dump you consumed however you got around to.  If you want Dan’s small business marketing strategies on building information products that sell for big money, you definitely want to click here now . . .

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5. The Stronger Than Paint Thinner Selling Stories: Zig Ziglar’s Spiritual Journey – Part 1

If you believe naked women were the key to Hugh Hefner’s rise to fame, you’d be dead wrong. In these marketing notes I’m going to show you the Dan Kennedy DNA Game Changer small business marketing strategies Hugh Hefner used to go from a nobody to a somebody

(HEADS UP: If seeing breathtakingly beautiful naked women bothers you, stop reading now and cheat yourself out of witnessing brilliance because within all this marketing awesomeness there’s a few ladies waiting to be admired below)

Show me any guy, of any age, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, today or tomorrow, that wouldn’t give his left nut to be Hugh Hefner at age 20, at 50, at 80. Living the lifestyle he lives, with beautiful women who adore him, happy beyond what any human being has the right to be happy.

Gene Simmons – Mega Entrepreneur/Lead Man of the KISS Rock Band

Hey You,

See how Hef went from a zero to hero

It’s Lewis a.k.a. Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd.

What if you were the Hugh Hefner of your market – the unmistakable, unforgettable, and untouchable man with the plan?

What if people were willing to give their left nut, left tit, to be you?

What if for you, like it did for Hef at one time, this seems like a pipe dream?

Well Dan Kennedy’s wisdom, Hugh Hefner’s seldom heard true Hollywood story and I are here to help you turn the impossible into the possible.

As you may or may not know, I recently descended into the belly of the beast that is Dan Kennedy’s DNA Game Changer System on a mission to drill down and sift through all the muck and filler in order to bring you the rawest, purest, and most potent business truths locked within the hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and more hours of the system and I emerged with an easy to consume at-a-glance, 118-page reference guide that flawlessly reveals every single diamond buried in this course.

Never again will you beat yourself up over missing that launch or be ashamed of yourself for being too lazy to take notes yourself. These gems are now at your finger tips, waiting to serve you, their master.

On this mining expedition, one name kept coming up again, and again, and again. That name was Hugh Hefner.

So, being the action-taker that I am, I tracked down all the Hef resources Dan referred to as well as some other stuff and that’s where I stumbled upon the documentary titled . . .

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel

This is a documentary in which Hugh Hefner walks you through each step of his rise from being an invisible writer for a children’s magazine to pioneering a men’s magazine and a movement becoming world famous in the process.

While watching this story I continued to see DNA Game Changing Principle after DNA Game Changing Principle and so I hunkered down and painstakingly took notes on each of the lessons I found and now I’m unveiling to you how unconsciously, Hugh Hefner used Dan Kennedy’s DNA Game Changer system to build his empire and how you can take these lessons and apply them to directly to your business as well.

Let the disrobing begin . . .

DNA Game Changing Lesson #1: Principle of Purpose

The story of why you’re doing what you’re doing is of incredible importance. Your audience has no desire to hear that your purpose for being in business is just for the money.

People are looking for you to be sharing what you possess because you feel that it would be a sin to not share it with the rest of the world and take it to the grave with you.

And yet the purpose you express has to be true to who you are.

If it’s complete bullshit that you “care for them deeply,” then don’t say that. You’ve gotta find your own answer that’s got truth in it and that is acceptable to them.

Look at Hugh Hefner expressed this to the readers of Playboy. . .

The deeds that men are being moved to by Playboy and the general thrust of our move towards a less repressed society, is a healthier attitude towards sex.

Hugh Hefner

Hugh is intrigued with why people try to hurt one and other as they do or why we are not able to love one another as we should. And he thinks this is the reason he majored in psychology in college, to try to understand why we are the way we are.  And maybe to make a difference.

You see nothing in what he’s saying that’s about maximizing profit even though he was aware of the need to do so. And I don’t believe for a second that he would’ve connected with his target audience had they not felt that his actions, which you’ll see below, were an extension of this purpose.

You can’t just talk about it. You’ve gotta be about it. 

DNA Game Changing Lesson #2: Principle of Origin

You want to compress time and bring people up to speed on your back story and origin stories are absolutely essential for bonding people to you.

Think about Batman. If you don’t have the story about his parents being killed in the alley by thugs, the falling in the well, the bats, the whole thing doesn’t make sense. Who the hell is this guy and why’s he running around fighting crime in this weird suit?

Look at Hefner’s origin story concisely told here . . .

Hef grew up with strong puritan roots and understood at a young age the repression people were chained down by and sinking from. He grew up in a home where there was no affection on display. So, he escaped into fantasies encouraged by the movies and music of the day.

In a dark theater you escape to anywhere.

I create fantasies. Hef creates fantasies. Half of the fantasies we create already exist in people’s minds and all we help do is draw them out.

George Lucas – Genius creator of Star Wars 

The happiest time prior to Playboy for him was during the last two years of high school because it was a very creative time writing for the school paper and expressing his thought in cartoons. He used cartoons to express himself rather than having a diary.

Even at this young age he was very much aware of and concerned about the sexual taboos and repression that existed in America.

In a post graduate course at Northwestern, he wrote a paper called, “Sex Behavior And The U.S. Law”. In this paper he compared the sex statutes with the then 48 states, the conclusion of which was, that if these laws were effectively applied, the majority of men would be serving some prison time. He made a clear cut case for the irrational nature of those laws.

In The 50’s People Weren’t Ready For Nudity

Nudity was conservative in terms of the white house. It was conservative in terms of the post office. It was conservative in terms of movies. It was conservative in terms of lifestyles.

After college he ended up taking a job at a children’s magazine and thought to himself, “Is my life simply going to be the playing out of a version of my parents? Is there nothing more.”

Performing/singing at a high school reunion brought back all the memories of dreams put aside – dreams lost. He was in a failed marriage and felt lost.

There was a moment a few days after this where he stood on the Michigan Avenue bridge in Chicago and looked out at the lake and wondered if that was all there is. Is this what my life is going to be? In the days immediately following, he started making plans in the living room of his south side apartment for a men’s magazine . . .

He went to the bank and the local loan company and managed to borrow from the two of them, $600. He then went to friends and relatives, anyone he could think of got them to invest a total of $8,000 from which he was able to put together for the first issue.

In 1953 he was working for a children’s magazine during the day then every night, sending off countless letters signed sometimes by “Hugh Hefner: Editor-In-Chief” and sometimes by “Hugh Hefner: Advertising Director” “Hugh Hefner: Circulation Director” because it was literally a one man band.

Little Details Matter More Than Flash

Notice how Hef’s origin story doesn’t include any earth-shattering events. He didn’t talk to god. He wasn’t struck by lightning. He didn’t have his dad dying out in his arms telling him to carry out his dream of owning a magazine.

His story is similar to how lots of people get their start but what adds elements of interest are the details like “Cartoons instead of diary”,  “Children’s Magazine”, “Northwestern”, Michigan Avenue Bridge, etc.

When you see the movie all these details have an even bigger impact because there’s a picture for every single one of these, his cartoons, the paper he wrote, the bridge, etc.

These details make your story vivid and help people make connections with you and you want to include them. In this movie, his is told just about right, not too much minutia and not too little.

Your origin story needs to be told a ton of times in different ways. It can be told as above, or just compressed into a couple of paragraphs to change up how people get this information about you.

You should never underestimate your customers ability to ignore you.

Even though you may have put your origin story in front of them six million times, some people won’t know it. And the people who do know it won’t mind hearing it again if it’s told well.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #3: Principle of Proof

When it comes to proving that your product or service does what you say it will and that you’re the king or queen, testimonials are one of the ways everyone knows to use to do so.

Here’s some other things that can serve to demonstrate how influential you are that you should keep in mind . . .

Name-Dropping/Who You Associate With:

When you’re surrounded by rock stars, you’re perceived as one also.

Peter Lowe did with his Success rallies. He didn’t do this by being charismatic. He did it by writing checks. This allowed him to surround himself with a wise mix of prominent people.

For Dan, having spoken at those Success rallies and now being able to drop the names of former Presidents of the United States, astronauts, movie stars, etc. and say he’s shared the platform with these guys has allowed him to make a strong impression on his audience.

He says the name-dropping has been far more valuable than the money he got paid from making sales of his products at those events.

Here’s the story of how Hefner wrote a check to make an earth-shaking entrance to the market . . .

Hef was looking for some kind of gimmick.

He’d learned that the already famous nude of Marilyn Monroe, which everybody had heard about but no one had seen, was owned by a local calendar company.

So he drove out there in his beat up Chevy and talked the owner into letting him publish that photograph.

Nobody had seen this because the post office took the position that it was obscene and therefore you couldn’t send it through the mail.

This picture appeared in the magazine at the same time Marilyn was doing some of her most popular films. In this first issue of Playboy, Hef – the nobody – came out guns a blazing, balls-to-the-wall, and the rest is history.

You can do this too by pulling out the check book and it’s gonna make an impact whether it’s one, two, or ten people you secure.

You could do this with seminars, tele-seminars, coaching programs, forwards in your books, articles in your newsletters, or content on your websites.

You’re aiming to surround yourself with both people of great prominence/credibility, or great celebrity power, or preferably both.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #3: Principle of Mental Imprint

He originally wanted to call the magazine “Stag Party”.

And at the very last minute before going to press, he’d received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer from “Stag Magazine” saying that “Stag Party” was a satire example from the same root.

Then someone threw out the name Playboy, referencing there was a car that been put out by the same name. So at the very last second he changed it from the stag in a robe, to a rabbit in a robe.

This worked out very well because it’s hard to imagine girls across country wearing antlers on their heads.

 The first issue pictured below was so well received that they’d printed 70,000 of them and sold 52,000 of them.

Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy do a marvelous job of this at their conferences.

All the signs at the front and back in the sales area that they put up that people are going to be staring at for three days are there on purpose. The way product is displayed and packaged is done intentionally.

You also need to be conscious of this when describing something.

Think of how Dan uses the word picture of a “Time Vampire” rather than just saying, “person who wastes your time”. People instantly get this, even without seeing a picture. This was the core driver when they did promotion for the NO B.S. Time Management book.

The cartoon of the time vampire will always be linked to Dan Kennedy just as the Playboy bunny will always be linked to Hefner.

You want to find symbols that do this same kind of heavy lifting for you.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #3: Principle of High Concept

You want an umbrella concept that has a sturdy base supporting it that is easy for people to get and gives you a lot of room to operate under.

This is more than brand.

Renegade Millionaire. That’s a high concept. Everyone has a thought/feeling about this when they hear it. It’s aspirational in the sense that even the most conforming person likes to think of themselves as an non-conformist.

Let’s peer into Hugh Hefner’s “High Concept” . . . 

So after the “Marilyn issue” Hefner continued to buy other pictures from other calendars and used those in the magazine.

But once they started shooting pictures of women on their own, he decided he didn’t want to go with something simply shot in the studio, in an impersonal way. And, he didn’t want models either.

He wanted to make the statement that beauty was everywhere. So the very nature of the Playmate of The Month was that she was the girl next door.

In the early photos he tried to imply the suggestion of a man in the room. Something that implied you were looking at a sexual situation of some kind without putting a dong or a hairy ass crack right in your face.

The reason for this was to say without saying that sex was a natural part of life and that nice girls like sex too.

Now in the 1950’s THIS was a revolutionary idea

Especially with feminists. And not just because of the supposed “indecency.”

Some women felt that the popularity of this magazine really escalated the fear in insecure women that if they didn’t have this perfect body, this Playmate body, they were considered less-than in the eyes of men.

Porn did the same thing to men.

But men are only focused on one body part and that was the schlong. With men seeing 12 inch pythons as the norm in every single porn they watched every single day and they, like the majority of the population of guys had an average to small wang, this invites all kinds of self-imposed sexual anxiety.

Yet despite resistance from the moral majority, the response to Hefner’s high concept from the vocal or in-the-closet free-spirits of the nation to this magazine was overwhelming.

Some of the greatest businesses, like Disney, operate from a marvelous high concept – Happiest Place On Earth.

Six Flags and Universal Studies don’t get this and as long as they stay in the “amusement park business” instead of the “happiest place on earth” business, they’ll keep getting the shit kicked out of them by Disney.

This is something you definitely want to cultivate for your business – big or small.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #4: Principle of Consistency

What you teach or preach as a professional must remain consistent with the fundamental philosophy you are known for. What you do in your stories and where people see you in real life must also be consistent. Inconsistency is the kiss of death when it comes to influence.

Hugh Hefner, probably single-handedly, more than perhaps any other man in history, made it okay for women to also like sex, encouraging the notion that even “good girls” enjoyed sex.

He obviously courted controversy. He wouldn’t have started Playboy if he was afraid of controversy. He believes controversy is the way you change things.

When he started publishing Playboy, he applied for a second class mailing permit and was turned down.

When they were turned down for a second time, they went to Washington and filed a complaint against the post office and were successful in overturning not only their ban, but overturning the ENTIRE PREMISE.

“Writer’s Digest wrote . . .

Playboy has just won in a wrestle with the Post Office. The P.O. had refused to grant Playboy a second class permit because it didn’t take kindly to this magazine’s editorial matter and art work. But the U.S. Federal Court handed down a ruling granting Playboy complete second class mailing privileges. Publisher Hugh Hefner said: “Henceforth we will continue to be edited in Chicago, not Washington.”

THE MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEW

This was the first network interview he had done after starting the magazine.

No one had ever heard of Hugh Hefner. He wasn’t formidable looking. And Mike Wallace felt he was doing him a favor by talking to him at that time.

Mike inferred that Playboy was nothing more than a “high-class dirty book.” Hef said, “I don’t think of it like that at all. There’s an important distinction here. Sex will always be a very important part of the book because sex is probably THE single thing that men are most interested in.”

Mike then states that what’s put forth in the magazine it isn’t a healthy kind of sex.

Hugh says, “I would not only suggest that it is, I would say rather strongly that we consider it a pretty healthy attitude.”

After the interview, Mike Wallace told Hef, “In 5 years you’ll be doing something else.”

Hef believes Mike was just reflecting the conservative times. Think about it – How dare this man publish a magazine that attempted to produce some decent literature with name writers (the quality of writers that wrote for Playboy magazine will go down in history as some of the very best) and also put naked or semi naked ladies in the book. How dare he!

Mike, being interviewed for this documentary now, admits that back then he was a prude and that he didn’t like Hugh.

CHARLES KEATING Attacks Hefner Next . . . 

“I think Playboy is among the most dangerous publications available today, the same as I would consider for example, socialism dangerous. We have a culture founded and based in Judeo-Christian standards. Playboy opposes this diametrically. It openly advocates the overthrow.”

Charles Keating

In the 1950’s Charles Keating formed what ended up being called, “The Citizens For Decent Literature”. It was a Catholic inspired censorship group.

“When someone tells you the church is criticizing you, what does that mean? The most vicious wars in the history of the planet were caused by the church. I don’t ever remember where the mafia got busted for raping little boys, but the church did. So that’s almost like a badge of honor when the church criticizes you.”

Dick Gregory – Comedian/Civil Rights Activist

In the 80’s the police caught up with Charles Keating and put him in prison for fraud.

Everybody has a sexual self. Everybody enjoys the pleasures of life. And you can pretend otherwise but as we have known from the past, most of those people who do that are the most problematic.

George Lucas – Genius creator of Star Wars

After the storm comes sunshine . . .

Hef thought the magazines circulation would top out somewhere around 700,000 because that’s what Esquire magazine was selling.

By their 5th anniversary, the magazine had reached a million. They had passed Esquire. He felt successful beyond his wildest dreams.

Your Fans Want To See You As Consistent As Monday Coming After Sunday

Can you see how after attack after attack after attack Hefner held fast to the position that he was doing nothing wrong?

You can bet that his enemies and his fans both respected this about him. And your enemies and fans will feel the same way about you if you take a strong polarizing position you believe in and crusade for.

Because Dan is so conscious of this he has to be very careful when talking about brand building because he’s beat up on it so much, spending the majority of his effort telling everyone to spend their money on direct response advertising instead of image advertising.

He knows more than he lets on about the internet but has to watch what he says about it. And unless he’s dead, he’s never gonna call in sick on a speaking gig.

The box you put yourself in is the one you’re gonna stay in.

This is why Dan has never been a big fan of the personal development business. It imposes standards on you that teaching other stuff doesn’t. It asks you to be perfect and this is very hard position to maintain.

If you can find the polarizing profitable position or and passionately carve out a unique space for yourself, in the name of a high concept that empowers an audience and remain consistent under fire, you’ll find yourself living a worthy purpose.

Nothing great was ever accomplished without having withstood MASSIVE resistance from people who held the opposite values or beliefs. This is a little something to keep close to your heart on your way to making a name for yourself.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #5: Principle of Fascination

In the 50’s in Chicago, most of the night club performers were friends of Hugh Hefner’s.

Don Adams, Buddy Rich, Sammy Davis Jr. and Bill Cosby would come over day and night to the Playboy offices. One night Tony Bennett gave Hugh the idea to start a jazz festival.

At the end of the 1950’s, they were successful in putting together what turned out to be the most historic jazz festival in the history of the music.

It was called the “Greatest Weekend In the History of Jazz.” Everybody was there. It was two days of the most phenomenal music in the world.

The jazz festival had really broken through in terms of turning Playboy into a mainstream brand.

Dan Kennedy points out that if you think Playboy is about naked women, you’re dumb

One of the things that means the most to Hefner is his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because Hollywood and his love of movies is so rooted in his  childhood.

This was a pinnacle of recognition for him from an industry he adored. 

What drove Playboy was Hugh Hefner’ s personal narrative that his fans bought into. Who was this guy who popped up out of nowhere and now has all the most famous movie and music stars and most beautiful women in the country coming to his home? How did he do it? Why did he do it?

One observation worth noting from the book about Hefner is, “Hef has starred in the movie of his own life.”

He’s turned himself into this bigger than life personality and included everything into his persona that a great fiction character has. He has quirks, odd habits, heroic acts and all of these have helped him stay an object of fascination to generation after generation after generation of men.

Think of how people plot and scheme trying to get invited to one of his parties. If you follow these DNA Game Changer Principles your fans will have feelings like this about you too.

In the movie that is your life, you want to be showing scenes to people for different purposes, purposes that turn you into a character that will resonate with your audience.

What If I Haven’t Built The Playboy Magazine and I’m Boring?

Think sitcom T.V. here.

Seinfeld is the show about nothing. Certainly nothing exotic. On this show, the stories aren’t about hair-raising action or doctors dramatically saving people’s lives and yet it’s one of the most profitable shows ever written in the history of television.

The most enduring sitcoms tell stories that everyone can relate to. You don’t have to have any decimating ailment you’re battling, you don’t have to been raised in a cave with bears in China to have people fascinated by your stories.

All that you’re doing with fascination is giving people ways to connect with you. This comes through disclosure. And you keep revealing to keep them interested.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #6: Principle Of Point Of View

When Hugh Hefner expanded his media into television, he came out from behind the desk and started to literally reinvent himself and become the character he was espousing in the pages of the magazine becoming Mr. Playboy himself.

The notion of doing a television show as way to promote the magazine was natural to him. He started taping the show in October of 1959. It was a variety show to be aired at late night.

The thing that set this apart was the concept.

The show place in a penthouse apartment and a subjective camera came up and gave you the view as if you were a guest arriving a private party of beautiful/hip people who came to watch the comedy and hear the conversation and hear the music. 

This picture shows Hef welcoming Tony Bennett to the show taking his coat for him and calling for someone to get Tony a drink.

Hef picked the most incredible young artists that all ended up being huge. Great artists, great comedians, great actors and the guests were of every race. There were no racial taboos he was concerned with on the show because there were no racial taboos in his life.

This was extremely controversial in 1959-1960. And because of this, the show got no distribution in the south. It’s very difficult for people to remember what it was like back then or to even comprehend what it was like if they were born decades later, the racial bigotry, the separation that existed.

Sammy Davis Jr. was anxious to be on the show and they did an entire episode around him. And this is a picture of Hef giving Sammy the gift of a St. Bernard puppy named “Playboy”honoring Sammy for having been on the show.

Hef not only had black people on the show, but he also invited mixed race groups singing jazz or whatever the hell on there which was an outrage because the races weren’t supposed to mixing with each other like this.

And with his actions, he didn’t have to be the white guy on TV saying he wasn’t racist. He just took the actions that said it all for him.

How You Want People to See You Should Color Everything You Say And Do

Your point of view is your philosophy.

And your philosophy you want your market to connect with needs to be woven into all of your stories. Your philosophy lets people know who you are and where you come from.

People are constantly seeking out value connections, not mechanical connections.

People won’t always admit to this because it’s not the “intelligent/logical” factor to go on to make your decision to do business with someone or not, but in the end, it’s the x factor that can work in your favor or not.

A great example of this that Kennedy pointed out was during the Republican Debate during the year when Obama got elected. That year they were letting people on YouTube ask the candidates questions.

Well, instead of people asking, “How do you propose to keep proposition 10-2-89 from ruining the industrial sector of steel mill production in Pittsburgh?” they’re on there asking religious litmus test questions which were great for a guy like Huckabee who was a minister. But the pro debaters running the debates who are focused on transformation of policy hate those “irrelevant” questions.

But this is a glimpse into what people really want.

People don’t give a shit about how you’re gonna eliminate the IRS. That’s not how they make their decisions but they have to say they want the resume or else they look dense and emotional. Maybe it should be that way, but that ain’t the way it is.

People are always sifting for what part of your philosophy they connect with and they don’t even have to be perfectly matched with you.

Think about the small business owner sitting in the crowd of that debate.

Most people in his shoes value independence and work ethic and believe that if you work hard, and play by the rules in America, you can be successful. He’s looking for the candidate that trots these similar beliefs out for him to connect to, not the plans you have that will never be realized.

What you’re about NOW is different than what you’ve been about or what you’ll be about in the future and people need to see this in order to let themselves be influenced by you.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #7: Principle Of Unique Importance

The House On American Activities Committee began investigating people who they believed to be un-American and the very notion of defining who your neighbor was by their politics was abhorrent to Hefner.

Neighbors were spying on neighbors. People lost their jobs and he felt that they had fought a second world war to put an end to all of that. And to some extent he felt that we were becoming the very people that we had defeated.

In his magazine, he allowed black listed writers and celebrities to voice their opinion. Any opportunity he could get to push the envelope, he did.

He exchanged letters in 1960 with Ronald Regan long before he became president because Ronald objected to the fact that he was running pieces by Dalton Trumbo, an unfriendly witness in the House Of American Activities Committee, and ran a profile on Charlie Chaplin at a time when he was considered the most hated man in America just because of what some people thought his politics were, when in actuality, his politics were very American.

What Hef didn’t know at the time was that Reagan himself had been working behind the scenes as the President of Screen Actors Guild, giving names to the FBI.

Hef, in his letters back and forth with Reagan pointed out that those with a view, perhaps more liberal that what Reagan’s was, were certainly just as American as he was and that ALL PERFORMERS were welcome on Playboy’s Penthouse.

There was no network that told Hef what he could and couldn’t do and that’s why he created the show that he felt the audience would enjoy. So even Lenny Bruce, who was being arrested across the United States in clubs, for obscenity, appeared on the show.

When Lenny was pulled off stage and arrested in the very Catholic city of Chicago, the cop said he did so . . .  “because he was very offended as a Catholic.”

Hugh got his lawyer on the case and got Lenny out of jail and this is when Hef started writing about the injustice of it in “The Playboy Philosophy” and in the process commented on the inappropriate relationship between the catholic church and the city government in Chicago.

This was cultural suicide.

In June, the cops came and arrested Hefner. The supposed reason for his arrest was because he was running a pictorial on Jayne Mansfield from her movie, “Promises, Promises”.  

Well there was nothing in that pictorial that was any different than the spreads they had published in the past and there was no doubt in his mind that the real reason for the arrest was because of what he wrote in his editorials about Lenny Bruce.

They took him to court with a jury of 11 house wives (a number of them from a religious organization) and one lone urban male. But it ended up being a hung jury and the city dropped it.

That June issue with Jayne Mansfield in it ended up being their best-seller up to that point.

Hef feels that the Playboy Forum and the Playboy Foundation changed the landscape in terms of a lot of social and sexual values and hurtful laws and actually got some wrongly accused people out of prison.

The letters they published in the forum were not as important as their answers to them because it allowed for a continuing dialogue between their fans and themselves.

One letter they received was from a disc jockey that was serving 10-12 years in prison for fellatio, a young fan gave him a blow job against all logic and against all odds, they arrested him for sodomy.

Sodomy laws in all 5o states were the most serious sex laws. In Georgia you could get up to 50 years if found guilty of it. This guy had already been in prison for a couple of years when he wrote to Hef.

Hefner was outraged by this and he sent word that he wanted the Playboy foundation to get behind this, to get this man out of jail because he didn’t belong there.

They got the man a lawyer and managed to get him off.

This foundation also played a major part in the changing of the laws around abortion and birth control and a lot of the things that are thought of today as women’s issues.

Much as the way that there are a lot of black athletes. who don’t know who Jackie Robinson is and have no idea why they’re the beneficiaries of what his pioneering was all about, there are probably a lot of people today out there enjoying freedoms who have no idea that Hugh Hefner was the pioneer who got all the arrows in his back.

Bill Maher: Comedian – Talk Show Host

Hefner used the “Playboy Philosophy” column and his foundation to give unique importance to his magazine.

Hefner was the prophet of the Playboy Philosophy and he believed and stated that this philosophy was destined to liberate us all from what he variously calls superstition, tyranny, moral absolutism, etc.

If that’s not a claim of unique importance, I don’t know what is. In essence he’s saying, this isn’t just some nudie book. THIS is a MOVEMENT! A CAUSE! A FORCE FOR GOOD NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH.

You see this theme of “Hero to the Oppressed” reinforced over and over and over again not only his writing but most importantly, in his actions.

What actions are you taking that are sharing your unique gift and making an important and significant splash in your market? If you answered, “None”, it shouldn’t surprise you that you don’t dominate your pond because you aren’t the big fish there.

Take Dan’s advice and follow Hefner’s lead in DOING SOMETHING that gets attention and simultaneously allows you to experience fulfillment in your life.

And be ready for some peers in your market not liking you becoming a big shot based on your polarizing views. Not all of them like you now. They’ll just be more vocal about it when you’re famous.

So if everyone isn’t going to like you whether you’re broke or rich, you may as well ignore the haters and bask in the love of your perfect prospects and make some money in the process of being true to yourself and making a difference in your own little corner of the world.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #8: Principle of Place

Here’s How Hugh Hefner teased this . . .

“The Existential Importance of Hef’s House Explained”

Playboy carton, 1970: A man has clambered to a mountain peak to beg wisdom from a cross-legged guru. Guru tells the man: “In a place called Chicago . . . there’s a wise man who lives in a mansion full of beautiful women and wears pajamas all the time. Sit at his feet and learn from him, for he has found the secret to happiness.”

The actor James Caan talks about showing up the house and seeing 20 half naked women by fireplace and feeling like this was a mini-Disney Land for adults.

Hugh Hefner served the best wines you could imagine, yet he didn’t drink wine. He had the best food you could imagine. He didn’t care about food. He used to eat pork chops and fried chicken. He had a closet full of beautiful clothes and he never wore anything but his pajamas. He had a swimming pool, he didn’t swim and it goes on and on and on like this.

Tony Curtis talked about how when you got into you town you went over to his place, he’d give you a room and there you were, these beautiful girls roaming around and if you were clever, if you had a flair, if you weren’t a ding dong, and you didn’t make anyone feel unhappy, you could have fun with any of the girls who wanted to have fun with you for the weekend or for the week. 

Hef was known to say that the front door was a screen and people were projecting their own fantasies on the screen. Hefner was a director behind the scenes, directing the scenes.

What Is The Existential Importance Of Your House?

How does your place verify to your perfect prospects that you have found the secret to real success, real happiness, real fulfillment. When you come up with a great answer for this, you’ll have a shit-ton of the right people wanting to get in.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #9: Principle of Fable

In the 60’s is when they started doing the interviews section of the book and Alex Haley did the very first Playboy interview with Miles Davis and in the interview Miles talked more about race than about music.

Their interview format became the definitive interview that set the standard. The layout of the interview has never changed. There are things in the magazine like the interview and the centerfold that are so iconic that Hef would not want to change them.

Alex Haley did a great number of great interviews . . .  Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and then he finally wrote “Roots”.

The most extraordinary interview Alex did was with the Ne0-Nazi Norman Rockwell. Norman didn’t expect Alex to be black. When they met, Alex said, “His face was mottled with anger.”

He said, ‘I’m gonna tell you right now, and be truthful with you. We call your kind niggers and we think you should all be shipped to Africa.’ And I’ll never forget how somehow a calm descended on me at that moment and I just said to him very calmly, ‘I’ve been called ‘nigger’ before and this time I’m being paid very well for it. So now you can go on ahead and tell us what you’ve got against us.’”

Jim Brown, the retired hall of fame football player (also interviewed in Playboy) says, “There’s a truth of the Ku Klux Klan. There’s a truth of a racist. They have a truth that they live by. If we allow them in the right forum to express themselves, it’s better for the country.”

The most controversial interview they ever did, was with Jimmy Carter before he was elected president and the Republicans used it as THE major source of controversy during the election period. And despite all the shit talking, Jimmy got elected.

Piggy Back On Other People’s Stories

Do you see how Hefner was able to add a whole different intriguing element to the magazine just by relaying a story to you about another person’s experience in the form of an interview?

And the interviews always supported the high concept of the magazine – freedom from the suppression of opinion – the expression of the self.

Why couldn’t you do the same thing with your newsletter, ezine, or blog?

There’s four basic types of stories you can tell . . .

• Yours, from personal experience
• Your telling a story about another person’s experience
• A parable; story told as if fiction (Richest Man In Babylon, Acres of Diamonds)
• Fable; story of the tortoise and the hare is a fable

The interview model would fit best with the second option on the list above.

A prime example of how information marketers used other people’s stories is the Chicken Soup For The Soul book series. While Canfield and Hansen didn’t interview people, the authors posed the question and let other people tell them their short success stories that rallied around a theme the author wanted to build up your confidence about.

The Defining Moments interviews that Seth Larrabee did rode on the this same strategy of relaying to you another persons story. They tapped into the feelings that up and coming and super star internet marketers felt when they recognized that they were actually making a living at this internet marketing thing. The theme these interviews revolved around was, “This isn’t easy but don’t give up because it’s not as hard as you think it is to have the internet marketing lifestyle.”

Look at this post. It’s me turning Hugh Hefner’s story into content. You can do the same thing and I highly recommend you do so because stories stick and make your points memorable.

Here’s a story Dan tells at this seminar to demonstrate this point . . .

Who’s Peeing In Your Pool Right Now?

Traveling sales guy gets a pool in the backyard and sets up a condition that because he’s on the road all week, that his little son Johnny is gonna pick up the slack and take the net out every day and clean the pool and clean the filter.

First week, he arrives home on Friday and says to the wife, “How’s little Johnny doing?” She says, “He hasn’t touched the pool all damn week.” He grabs little Johnny by the scruff of the neck, takes him out to the pool, picks up the pool cleaner, throws Johnny in the pool, throws the pool cleaner in with him. Johnny cleans the pool.

When the dad isn’t looking, Johnny pisses in the pool.

That’s one way this scenario could go down. Or, you do things differently and the dad throws Johnny in the pool, throws the pool cleaner in the pool, and jumps in himself and helps him clean the pool. The moral of the story is that people will piss in your pool if you don’t handle the delegation process exactly right.

Now telling this story is gonna get you more traction than all the diagrams and lists and analytical teaching you can do.

The other bonus is that it’s memorable and easy to re-tell. Dan will have people referencing it back to him like, “Yeah, I caught Bertha pissing in the pool the other day and it’s probably my fault just as much as it is hers. . . ”

So you come up with your theme – in the story above it’s the need to delegate correctly – and you tell someone else’s horror story and another person’s success story. Or, you ask them tell it in an interview fashion.

I imagine it’d be easier to get a response to asking a guru to recount for you one of their scariest or funniest or most tender stories of doing something wrong and then how they learned how to do it right than it would be to get them to agree to a 60-90 minute interview or to submit a content article for your ezine.   

Just keep in mind that you want your story or stories all driving home one point on the theme you’re advocating.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #10: Principle of Prevention

He wrote the first installment of the Playboy Philosophy in 1962 with the notion of simply doing it for one issue.

It was really just an editorial in response to his critics because if he was going to be damned, he wanted to be damned for what he really believed – not what people pretended he believed.

He believed that we we’re apt to have a truly more monogamous society if we do more realistically come to grips with problems pertaining to sex.

He believes an individual should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t impede on your choices for happiness.

He wants to live in a society where people can voice un-popular opinions because he knows that as a result of that, a society grows and matures.

A lot of America didn’t want this to be the case.

In his typically obsessive way, he continued to write the Playboy Philosophy every issue for the next 2 1/2 – 3 years.

All of the editors on staff HATED it. They felt they were trying to produce and entertainment magazine and this was not entertainment. This was him talking about his thoughts in one installment. Well, THE READERS LOVED IT!

FUCK YOUR STAFF if they don’t get this. Most of them won’t.Look at how it would be assumed that if you were working for Playboy, you’d be a renegade and yet, his staff were scared shitless of supporting what their fearless leader believed in. If he’d a let there be a democracy in that office, I would say Playboy probably would’ve been killed years ago amidst the heavy duty competition (Penthouse, Hustler, etc.) who came out with more raw and in your face ‘entertainment’ (penetration sex scenes, full on shots of wet vaginas, etc.

I love how Kennedy addressed this at his Renegade Retreat when someone brought up the idea of “My staff won’t let me do it.” Kennedy’s question back is, “Who’s working for who here? I didn’t realize they got a vote! What’re you running over there, a democracy? You do that shit you’re gonna be outvoted every time. You may as well just hand over the check book and take your ass home.”

Today, Hugh believes we’re relatively free in terms of our sexual behavior and I believe the evidence is here to say he’s had a hand in making this possible.

What is Your Philosophy?

Hef’s philosophy enunciated not only made an impact on his fans but on his critics and on the future of our society.

It’s important to decide what you want to be known for. It’s equally as important to decide what you DON’T want to be known for. This step is about everything you do to prevent assumptions.

You always want to remember that fixing something negative that is found out about you is far more difficult to do than just preventing it in the first place. In other words, it’s easier to diffuse the bomb before it blows up in your face.

Robert Greene in his book “The 48 Laws of Power” explains in the 5^th law…

SO MUCH DEPENDS ON REPUTATION – GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE

“Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen.”

You don’t want to leave room for something to spread about you that doesn’t serve you well. This means you have to think about what those things are and preemptively address them and if they do get talked about, you go about correcting them.

Don’t Be An Idiot Like Dr. Laura and Al Gore

Dr. Laura didn’t think this principle out.

Think about how she lied about being a doctor. She didn’t need to do this. The people giving her money, her fans, didn’t give a shit about her being a doctor or not. She lied about this seeking approval from her peers. This is a death trap.

The only way the public cared about her being a doctor, or not, is after she got busted for lying about it. And she’s got a doctorate but Kennedy says it’s from some shit bird place, Columbia Pacific University, a P.O. Box where you send your filled out four pages of paperwork and you’ve got yourself a doctorate.

There’s a lot of those floating around on the walls of people who want a doctorate but don’t want to do the work. Please don’t attempt to be another person thinking this is what you need.

The public doesn’t give a shit if she had a PHD or not. She didn’t embellish her story, she made it up. And this leads to her looking like that idiot Al Gore who got his hand caught in the cookie jar, not once, but twice when he lied about inspiring some love story that was written by someone else and got called out on it and then going and telling the press of all sources to tell, that he invented the internet.

Kennedy says word for word, “That’s stupid shit because you can’t support it, it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t essential or even helpful towards their storyline so why put yourself in that position in the first place?”

Dan, at one time has aspirations of running for a political office and while creating his list of disclosures for his announcement speech, he said “Screw this.”

He figured his speech’d a been three hours long because he’s got all kinds of relatives, living and dead that have been in jail, chased each other down the street with guns, dealt drugs, gotten DUI’s and you’ve gotta dump all this shit on the table because it’s gonna come out anyway, especially if you win.

He’d a been three hours into the speech and not even gotten to all of his shit.

He said, “By the time you get done, the campaign is over you’re still giving the disclosures so that was a discouraging factor. But that’s the way to play the game.”

Hef understood this. Dan understands this. Now you do too!

DNA Game Changing Lesson #11: Principle of Transparency 

His first concern in reference to the Playboy Clubs was how they could create the fantasy that they reflected in the pages of the magazine. They put it all together and people brought the fantasy with them.

The idea was to create a private club, a key club and instead of simply having an act or two, they tried to have a platform for new talent. The popularity of the concept was overwhelming.

They started to franchise the club concept and the first two franchises that opened soon after Chicago were in Miami and New Orleans. Well, Hef acknowledged no color line when it came to the Playboy Clubs. So when the black key members went to New Orleans or Miami, they were turned away.

Hefner told the franchisees that if they were going to run a Playboy club, they were going to have to accept all of their members – black and white. In New Orleans the manager said they couldn’t do that because it was against the law in Louisiana, you can’t have black and white patrons sitting in the same club together.

There was segregation in the south bound by law. On that basis, he believed the laws were unconstitutional so he re-purchased the franchises and ran them their selves and opened them up to ALL of their members.

They ended up taking a huge hit, having to buy back those franchises but the exclusion of blacks from anything, any kind of segregation, was outrageous to them.

Hefner was one of many during this era that fought against this injustice and fought to bring about a truth in this country.

One night Erwin Cory was supposed to appear but couldn’t. Dick Gregory was a comedian who worked out of the south side of Chicago part-time and they put him on stage.

The room had been sold out to a private convention. A group of southern white men that were in the frozen food business. Well, the manager, when he found out about the situation, was waiting on the stairs to tell Dick that he didn’t have to work, but that he would still be paid.

Well, Dick was in such a hurry to make sure he wasn’t late for his great opportunity of working the Playboy room that he pushed the manager out of the way,  hit the second floor, walked out onto the stage at 8:00 and at 11:00 he was still on the stage talking.

In the early 1960’s, there was a racial bias related to stand up comics for reasons that Hef did not comprehend. It was appropriate for a black to be a musician and play jazz or sing but to be a stand up comic was not acceptable in those days.

And here comes Hefner into this climate of, “You can sing to me nigger, but don’t talk.” And now white people found a new voice in the stand up comedy world and the world has never been the same.

It goes to show you that one person with courage like Hefner, is the majority. I don’t even know if it took courage for Hefner. Maybe he just never gave it a thought.

Dick Gregory

Once Dick was working, the door opened for everyone else.

Jesse Jackson was attracted to Hugh Hefner because Hef was so committed to Dr. Martin Luther King and Jackson is the one who brought King to the mansion to discuss doing a fundraiser when he came there to address segregation issues.

Hefner ended up having a close relationship with both men, more so with Jesse.

And Hefner ended up publishing, shortly after his death, the last piece ever written by Dr. Martin Luther King (shown above).

Dorothy  Storck, writer for the Chicago Today, said . . .

“THERE IS THE OUTRAGEOUS incongruity of it all, of course. That we should be sitting there in the Hef-pad listening to Martin Luther King’s dream.”

Hef says, half talking to himself looking at the page after reading the copy above from the cut out article taped in his scrapbook, “Well, people don’t recognize or realize the extent to which it was part of my dream too.”

Jesse Jackson recalls Hefner having once every two weeks at the mansion these sit downs at night where he would just sit and listen for hours and invite the top people in to engage in evocative social commentary.

He would play a kind of Socratic role, asking certain basic questions.

So there’s the Hef with the pipe and the robes and Playboy, that’s his brand name but then there’s Hef, this serious thinker and activist and the magazine was used as a tool.

In 1976 Jim Brown nominated Hugh Hefner to get the “NAACP SPECIAL AWARD” and the committee agreed.

Brown was also able to present it to him.

Jim felt this was special to be gift this kind man with an award from an organization that fought for the rights of African-Americans and that nobody would be able to take this away from Hef because no one back then got one of these easily. 

And Hef believes America having Obama as President is a confirmation for him of what America is all about – equal opportunity for everybody. It’s a renewal for America, a whole new beginning.

The Self Is Always Coming Through 

I don’t imagine that back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s it was perceived by the upper class of wealthy white Americans as acceptable to be vocal and active in the civil rights movement.

Hefner could’ve kept his beliefs that racism was deplorable to himself and maybe anonymously made some donations to some causes to not draw attention to himself but he didn’t.

He was transparent.

Even though he knew that the racist privileged and the middle-class white males of America were very good prospects and had the money to spend on his magazine.

He didn’t try to hide what he believed. He put his damaging admission on display for the world to see and helped people chip away at their racist mentalities.

He helped America say, ‘Hey, come on, the time has come.’ It’s a little like Obama today. Obama, running for President of the United States? Gimmie a break. And when he came along and began to talk sensitively and he was attractive and interesting and had the message of hope and change, there was an audience. I think that Hef helped build that audience despite not being a protestor or a loud mouth.

Mike Wallace, correspondent of the famed CBS TV show 60 Minutes

What Damaging Admissions Are You Scared Of Making In Your Business?

Look at this ad here that Dan Kennedy included in the workbook for this seminar . . . 

DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO

Vote for a man. For ability. Character.

Vote for a leader who can attack problems and solve them.

Vote for the man who can rally all the people of Cleveland.

Vote for the man who believes.

Carl Stokes.

Carl Stokes was elected as the first black Mayor of Cleveland on the back of this campaign.

Dan Kennedy makes the point that guys like Herman Cain and Obama and other people who have the odds stacked against them right out of the gate don’t have the balls to run ads like this. And yep, he said ‘balls’. 

When you aren’t doing a one on one presentation with people, you can’t feel into what their response is to you and draw objections out and handle them on the spot. That’s why this ad is so great, especially today.

Hardly anyone is willing to admit in public that they wouldn’t vote for Obama because he’s black or Hillary because she’s a woman. Better to trot this out, put it on display and make it go away instead of hoping it goes away on its own.

One of my favorite speakers is a black man by the name of Les Brown.

When Les would speak on the Peter Lowe Success events, he would only do well selling from the stage in metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc.

They couldn’t put him on in Birmingham.

No one would buy from him and the elephant on the stage was the color of his skin. Dan tried to get him to use this strategy at the start of his speech, something to the tune of, “There’s a number of you in this room who are going to tune me out right now because of the color of my skin. If you do, you’re going to miss out on badoom, badoom, badoom,” but he wouldn’t.

The Stokes ad took cajones to run and if in fact you are racist, this message makes you actually have to question your prejudice. This is what’s possible for you to do with any perceived negatives you have working against you, if you’ll only have the courage to address them head on.

DNA Game Changing Lesson #12: Principle of Self-Identification 

This is where you allow people to quickly assess whether they’re in the right place or not, without you directly telling them they are.

It’s not blatant like segregation, holding up signs that say “NO COLOREDS”, but instead is based on what you’re saying that gets someone’s heart racing and eyes focused because they’ve stumbled upon someone who’s saying what they already believe – maybe for the very first time in their life or the first time in a long time – describing their experiences exactly the way they unfold.

One of the ways Kennedy knows he’s getting this right is when people tell him that it seems like he’s been hidden under their kitchen table recording their conversations and then feeding them back to them. That’s the point.

In the 60’s thru to the 70’s the readership of Playboy grew from over 1 million to over 7 million readers. He was saying something people liked and identified with. But a minority rose against him that he never thought would – feminists.

He never perceived that women would perceive him as an enemy. The first feminist diatribe against Playboy came in a confrontation on the Dick Cavett show.

But they couldn’t cut his legs off liked they hoped to. 

One militant feminist on the show claimed that the role that Hef selected for women in his magazine was degrading to them as sex objects, not as full human beings. She believed the Playboy costumes women had to? (chose to is the proper word here) wear in his clubs denied their humanity and their femininity. She stated he made them look like animals.

Hef thought, well, if women are animals, what’s left? Vegetable and mineral. Of course we’re animals. When someone suggests that Playboy turns women into sexual objects, women are sexual objects. They’re a great deal more than that but if women weren’t sexual objects, there wouldn’t be another generation.

That’s what makes the world go round, that attraction between the sexes. And this fact doesn’t objectify women in that other negative sense.

A lot of women don’t understand that in a lot of states, contraceptives were illegal and he was one of the first people out there putting cases before the court to change that so that women would have a right to choose not only the choice of abortion or not, but issues of contraceptives.

But a real testament to his appreciation of women is that all of girlfriends, past, present, future still show him love – no bad blood, no messy separations, no drama. Most men alive can’t pull this off with one women let alone however many he’s dated over the years. It was completely the opposite of what he was being criticized for.

I thought “Who better to help women who were dis-enfranchised as prostitutes.” On the other hand, it couldn’t have been a bigger risk for anybody other than him. He taught me to hold my head up high and look the world right in the eye.”

Dr. Lois Lee – Founder/President ‘Children of the Night’

World Famous Female Sex Therapist Gives Hef The Nod Of Approval

Dr. Ruth, the famed sex therapist adores Hugh and has visited the mansion many times and has been impressed at how he won’t retire but insists on staying active.

The Mansion serves as a Mecca where you can leave all your fun loving and sexual inhibitions behind because it’s a safe place to express yourself.

Some people believe that without some suppression of the sexual genie, happiness isn’t possible. One guy says that full liberation is possible for Hugh Hefner because he has an unlimited supply of young females to whom he owes nothing. He doesn’t believe this is available or desirable for the rest of society.

And yet this fits perfect with being an authority – people want to be you – and more often than not, they’re getting their own way if they aren’t where they want to be.

Hefner Crusades To De-Criminalize The Use Of Marijuana

Hef felt that putting people in prison for the use of a relatively harmless drug seemed irrational and bizarre to him. Life sentences were being handed out for possession of small amounts of Marijuana.

He was really concerned about these Draconian penalties being handed down. They built NORML into a national lobbying force that both helped people who were charged with these violations of these drug laws and also helped to change national policy.

Because of this, the government came to the false conclusion that he was some kind of drug user. And in the 70’s they tried to build a phony case against him.

One of his secretaries started dating a guy who dealt drugs and the two of them, her and her boyfriend, got busted with cocaine and next thing you know this headline hit the scene . . .

Well, she lived at the Playboy mansion so this gave the feds what they thought was a gift.  

They were no longer interested in the wholesaler in Florida. They weren’t interested in the boyfriend. They were suddenly interested in the secretary who was a user but not a dealer and they built the case around her.

When the secretary wouldn’t give them what they wanted, something incriminating in reference to Hef, of which there was nothing, which she kept telling them, they gave her a 15 year sentence and they let the drug dealer in Miami walk.

This led her to kill herself. Her family actually asked Hugh to be one of the Paul bearers.

The DEA reviewed all the evidence and then made a public and personal apology and dropped the case.

Hugh believes this is an example of what happens when a government becomes corrupt.

Next The F.B.I. Comes After Hef . . .

Starting with Reagan, America has allowed the Christian right to become a part of politics. And Hef doesn’t believe that’s good for politics, nor for religion.

As a result of this Hef discovered that the FBI had him under surveillance. Edgar Hoover had assigned one agent to read every single page of the magazine. Hef didn’t know if they were concerned about the sex in the magazine or what they said about the government, the FBI or him personally.

Mike Wallace: “Politicians have been hypocrites down the centuries. And I dare say that Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover, from what we have been told about him, were fairly hypocritical in the business of sex, sexual freedom, etc. etc.”

Jerry Fallwell put on a porn protest and this rally was payback from the religious groups who had supported Reagan. They started a witch hunt going after what they deemed obscenity but what they were really harassing were publications like Playboy.

He saw this a a parallel to what was happening with McCarthyism in the 1950’s. The Justice Department sent threatening letters to stores like 7-11 and other convenience and drug stores and other places where Playboy was sold.

He felt the best response to this was satire.

They did a nude pictorial of eleven women who worked at 7 Eleven.

This was a form of Playboy protest and protest by the employees themselves – one them quoted in an article as saying, “When someone comes in and asks if we sell Playboy I tell them, ‘No. We don’t sell magazines featuring beautiful women. But do have magazines that feature guns, violence, and war we’d love to sell to you.”

Nothing defuses censorship like humor because it is after all so silly in it’s premise.

Hef says, “We live in a world and in a country where obscenity is defined by things sexual instead of things related to war, killing, hatred and bigotry. What kind of world is that?”

Playboy actually sued the Attorney General Edwin Meese and won that suit and he publicly apologized saying that he didn’t mean Playboy and that Playboy isn’t harmful but the damage had been done – Playboy had been dropped from several thousand distributors, they’re still referred to as porn and they still don’t have anywhere near the distributors they had in the 50’s and 60’s.

Hefner was pissed not only at Playboy’s reputation getting marred but also sex getting it’s reputation marred.

Some people call Hugh Hefner a pornographer but if you go to a museum and see a painting of a naked woman, that’s art. But if that same art is displayed in Playboy, it’s pornography.

In America we have a sexual fault line just like we have a racial fault line. But this country was found on two traditions, one was the Puritans and there is a Puritan strain in this country, there is no doubt about it. We still giggle over tits and pee-pees. People are uptight. But there’s also the Libertarians strain, the ‘don’t tread on me’ strain of America. So those two factions have always been at war in America.

Bill Maher

The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of press and you cannot have a free society if you do not have both.

Who I am is an open book with illustrations but how one interprets those illustrations is very much a war shop test of someone else’s values. The magazine and my life are a reflection of some very controversial subjects. When you deal with sex and success it’s very controversial in America.

Hugh Hefner

Can you see how Hef’s message allows rational renegades to self-identify with him and his pursuit of freedom?

Hell, I’ve completely identified with him after hearing his beliefs throughout this whole documentary whereas before I’d heard him express himself, I was neither for nor against him. I had no clue as to who he was and thought he was just a smooth dude who used his wit and money to build an empire based on marketing images of nude women.

I only had the surface level impression.

This is the same thing that happens with you and your audience if you don’t weave any of your personality into your marketing and content in your own unique expressive language.

Help Your Fans See That They’re Home Sweet Home

If you look at any of the opening pages of books that have endured for decades and still sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year with no marketing or advertising at all like “How to Win Friends and Influence People” or “Think and Grow Rich” you’ll find they use language like this at the beginnings of their chapters to keep re-engaging their reader and keep them denying negative thoughts and self identifying with what’s being taught in that chapter.

This is obviously something that can and should be used in anything you write, including your salesletters. You want to use these language patterns to keep reestablishing your connection and keep people saying, “This guy gets me and we have mutual enemies and he’s got answers to my problems”.

This principle is universal and belongs in books, products, newsletters, faxes, daily emails, salesletters, marketing materials, tweets, Facebook comments, blog comments, etc.

Do You Have A Deep Seated Passion Keeping You and Your Business Alive?

Hefner cherishes relationships with young women because he feels they’re key to his relationship with his own childhood. So his life is continuously filled with young women and young women’s laughter. He feels that this is what keeps him alive.

When you see him today on television with his covey of companions he’s a very happy, prosperous, decent man. And you know something, I trust Hef. Haven’t seen him in a long time. I like him.

Mike Wallace – One of the original correspondents/journalist for CBS’ 60 Minutes

Hef told all the Playmates at the 25th anniversary party, that without them, he’d a simply be the publisher of a literary magazine and not the editor of a magazine that has had such an immense impact on society the way that it did over the last three decades.

He pointed out how much society has changed over that time, and that they’re sharing in an experience, the likes of which, will probably not come again.

Sorry Dr. Ruth, You’re a Sweetheart But You’re Out of Of Your Fucking Mind With This Belief . . .

It’s actually in my way of thinking, sad that he mixed up his personal life with his mission because people don’t take him seriously. People that I talk to at the universities and my colleagues, I can’t mention Hefner because they don’t think about the free speech. They only think about his 3 girlfriends. That’s sad.

Dr. Ruth – World Famous Sex Therapist

First of all, people who she perceives she can’t talk to about him probably have a stick so far wedged up their ass that it interferes with their ability to think for themselves. They’re the same people vehemently downing nudity in public yet have a computer full of nasty-nasty porn.

These people aren’t Hefner’s perfect prospect and because he’s marketed his magazine correctly, they’re driven away.

Maybe Dr. Ruth didn’t watch this movie and see everything this man accomplished besides the herculean accomplishment of maintaining a multi-million dollar business for decades . . . despite the highest powers in the nation – FBI, DEA, Attorney General, Catholic Church, Police Departments, The Justice Department, Future President Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell – who swung a huge dick with the religious community in his day, Mike Wallace and the rest of the mainstream media taking their best shot at him doing everything they could to put him out of business.

And look at him now, bitches.

Enemy after enemy have cowered to Hefner’s loving mission once feeling that his resolve was definitely something to take be taken seriously.

Could You Handle All The Scandal And Keep On Stepping Like Boots And Sandals?

I personally can’t think of any business owner who sustained success as long as he has who had to face the intensity of consistent harassment he did. 

I believe the only reason Playboy succeeded and has endured for all these decades, even into these current times where they’ve transformed from being passionate renegades with a cause to just being a corporation with no differentiation from any of the other skin mags, was precisely because Hef used the DNA Game Changer principles so passionately and wove his personal philosophy into his early content.

A magazine that just stood on the single pillar of naked pictures alone wouldn’t have got him anywhere near the exposure he got.

DNA Game Changer Principles turned Playboy Magazine into a Parthenon of strength that provided Hefner with the muscle (connections/financing) that served him so well in crusading for all the causes he did.

DNA Game Changer Principles are what differentiates Hefner, from the guy you never heard of who first published Penthouse Magazine.

And to whom is “ALL People taking him seriously” in service of? Certainly not Hefner. Certainly not his perfect prospect. Certainly not for all of us who enjoy freedoms today as a result of him refusing to be bullied.

It was by people not taking him seriously – Attorney Generals, FBI, religious zealots, the press, that he won many a battle in the past. His willingness to stand up for what he believed in forced some of his most powerful enemies take him seriously. And I feel I am a beneficiary of him not caring to be “accepted” by the “serious?” moral majority. 

Times Have Changed For Playboy

When I was talking to Dino Dogan at his site, he pointed out to me how Playboy is a shell of what it was at 25. I agree with him after watching this documentary.

Before I’d seen this, I only had a very slim impression of the 21st century Playboy which is the constant pitch fest that is their email marketing which is nothing but image ads with gorgeous, naked women promoting their “Cyber Club”.

No Hef.

No activism.

No meaningful engagement with the audience.

Just nekked women (sometimes holding machine guns – WTF?!?) with, more often than not, bad tit jobs and a line of copy that tells me to “BUY NOW – 69% DISCOUNT”.

These marketing messages are the polar opposite of the Playboy Philosophy.

Playboy has officially been taken over by marketing idiots. After Hef parks his body somewhere on earth and checks into the Playboy Club in heaven, it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes the new parasitic regime to kill the goose that’s laid so many golden eggs.

Oh, I know it’s not gonna be a quick death as by strychnine. The “Corporate Board” is more like junk food. Their practices kill you nice and slow.

Beware This Trap

If you’re new to the game it’s tempting to see the “Big Boys” email marketing like this and think this is how you should be marketing too. 

You see the fancy graphics, slick logos, and no long salesletter you have to write or pay someone else to and get seduced into thinking that if they’re doing it, you can too.

Wrong. Wrong. And More Wrong.

This is why I feel that a blog in this day and age can be a huge asset. You can use it as a platform to put forth all of your own personal DNA Game Changer principles that rope in perfect prospects who haven’t bought from you yet and give you all the benefits of having a website AND you can just send your posts to the people who give you their email address and let these Game Changer Principles do the selling for you and if you want, put a PS. at the end of every one of your emails directing people to something you sell in a direct but very low key way.

Remember To Stay True To Your Mission

There are more years behind Hugh Hefner than ahead of him. I believe the same is true for Playboy unless some kind of DNA intervention is made. Especially if when Hefner dies the people who take over insist on competing on the cheap commodity of nudity.

I don’t read Playboy and never have but Dino as well as others tell me it’s shit now compared to what it was when Hef was Starship Commander in his prime.

In this era of Photoshop and reconstructive surgery it’s hard for me to even believe I’m witnessing genuine feminine beauty in the pictures that I do see in their ads. I can’t be the only person thinking this.

I love what Tina Fey, the huh-larious woman behind the multi-Emmy award winning TV series ‘30 Rock’ jokingly says about this trend in her book, “Bossypants” . . .

Back in my days you were either blessed with a beautiful body or not. And if you were not, you could just chill out and learn a trade. Now if you’re not “hot,” you’re expected to work on it until you are. It’s like when you renovate a house and you’re legally required to leave just one of the original walls standing. If you don’t have a good body, you’d better starve the body you have down to a neutral shape, then bolt on some breast implants, replace your teeth, dye your skin orange, inject your lips, sew on some hair, and call yourself Playmate of the Year.

She then goes on to say she wouldn’t change any of the traits her mom and dad handed down to her even though they’re imperfect and even though she makes something like $30,000 dollars per episode she writes for her show and could easily afford to zap, chop, or suck out any of the imperfections of her body.

I like that.

Tina’s look reminds me of the “girl next door”. She’s not hideous and she’s not a runway model. For me, she’s just right. Her sense of humor and the way she doesn’t take herself too serious is what makes her ultra sexy to me.

What a Playmate represents now is far from the original high concept of “beauty was everywhere and that the very nature of the Playmate of The Month was that she was the girl next door”. 

Always keep in mind that the evolution of what you represent is necessary but that it should always be in the name of forward progress.

What To Do Now

It seems to me that Hef has stopped actively engaging in the DNA Game Changing moves that built this brand into the icon that it is.

Maybe he just wants peace, quiet and love from here on out. I believe he’s earned that and more for what he’s done that will never be forgotten by those who matter.

But know this. If you’re gonna be an MVP player in the game of business, making bold DNA Game Changing moves and disclosures are necessary and they invite controversy and challenge from the universe.

As soon as Hef stopped making moves and letting his fans into his world with an ever evolving, expanding “Playboy Philosophy”, his empire started to lose the core driving source of it’s luster and now the magazine has the feeling of being a business in it for the dollar instead of the platform for a man on a crusade to operate from.

Controversy and challenge is to be welcomed if you’re on a mission to transform your market, your industry, your turf.

You can rest assured that if you’re on a mission to do something great, someone or something will oppose you. Look at any historical example of this from Jesus to George Washington and the founding fathers to Gandhi to Martin Luther King to Hugh Hefner.

And you’ll know how effective you are by how loud your opposition is and how scary your challenges are. Embracing this reality will allow you to leave a mark on the world by sharing your specific gift in all of it’s naked glory.

Use these DNA Game Changing Principles to chronicle your tale and bring people aboard to help you in battle and leave this world having pressed your unique gifts into it. 

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne a.k.a. Note Taking Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd

PS. One more thing and it’s important. There’s 31 of these principles and we’ve only touched on 12 of them here.

I understand that because you’re all the way down here reading this now you’re  dying to get access to ALL 31 of these principles. I felt the same way during the launch but in a way, I envy you because with these notes you’re instantly cutting right to the core of the results-getting, money-making strategies offered up in this seminar – while I endured hours and hours and hours and hours and more hours of ass leathering and hand cramping to listen for and type these out for you. 

Lucky you! (you should be doing a happy dance right now)

Just click here and within seconds you’ll be basking in glory that are the full marketing notes on Dan Kennedy’s DNA Game Changer course and ALL the small business marketing strategies within it. . .

Related posts:

1. Free Notes On Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System Course
3. Dan Kennedy Shows You How To Joint Venture Like A Pro

See The Productivity Tip That Is The Back Bone Of This Renegade Millionaire Dan Kennedy’s Success and How It’s Easily Available and Waiting For You To Put To Use In Your Life

Hey You,

Stop coming at your work with the wrong approach

It’s Lewis a.k.a. Nerd #2 a.k.a L.L. Cool Nerd.

I don’t believe I’ve ever studied and taken notes on one of Dan Kennedy’s courses and come away disappointed. 

His Renegade Time Management course is positively incredible. It was a program I’d always wanted notes on in order to keep prisoner each of the principles that allow Dan to reign supreme in a crowded niche, year after year after year.

And now, I have taken all the notes and I’m sharing with you today what I feel was the most important insight he’s ever revealed on the topic of getting more shit done.

Prepare Yourself For A Glimpse Into The Lifestyle Of a Business Building Legend

In respect to the contrarian approach to time management that he takes, it mirrors what he tells people who have an entrepreneurial business – which is, they shouldn’t blindly mimic what big dumb corporations are doing in regards to their marketing and advertising.

On a similar note, if you want to be productive as an entrepreneur, using time management methodologies and tools composed with executives and middle managers in mind who work on a 9-5 schedule in an office and call it good day if they barely got anything done, is equally as dumb.

Dan owns somewhere in the ball park of 200 books and programs on the topic of time management and has seen pretty much everything presented on this topic and his opinion is that most of this stuff is built for people who aren’t doing very much.

Dan operates from the premise that if you want extraordinary results, then you’re not gonna come by those with “normal” methods – which applies to time just the same as it applies to playing the piano or building a home.

One of the questions people ask Dan Kennedy most often is . . .

“How The Hell Do You Get So Much Done?”

When people observe how much work Dan does, with only one person supporting him, they’re in awe. They’re also intrigued by how he limits access to himself.

He does three newsletters a month . . .

As a copywriter he’s doing 5-10 major client projects a month . . .

He’s writing advertising and sales copy, as well as product for the business he’s involved in . . .

He’s averaging 4-6 full day consultations a month . . .

He’s got 72 people in coaching groups who require his personal attention . . .

He’s had at least one book a year published for the last decade . . .

He still speaks at least once a month (he used to manage almost this same workload when he was on the road speaking 100+ days a year) . . .

He’s doing day to day business stuff . . .

He’s managing his money . . .

He’s fooling around with his race horses . . .

And people look at this and consider it to be three people’s work load. That he gets this much done every month is compelling along with him working with only who he chooses to work with, when he chooses to work with them.

If this is inspiring to you, then the Renegade Time Management philosophy is definitely your source for finding some contrary methods that allow this kind of productivity to flourish.

But maybe you don’t think this is possible for you. Maybe you have the same concerns other people do. See if this is something you’re saying to yourself . . . 

“You’re super human Dan and your methods won’t work because my business is different.”

“My business is different,” is the knee jerk excuse that blurts out of everyone’s guilty mouth for not doing all kinds of effective things they should be doing.

The same things people say about his contrarian advertising and marketing is the same thing said about his time management philosophy.

Why is your business different? It probably isn’t.

All businesses have same fundamental functions in common:

They have either a customer, a client, or a patient.

They provide either a good or a service or both.

They either go to the customer’s location or bring the customer to their location.

They have to have some method of bringing new people in.

They have to have some method of repeatedly selling to and keeping the customers they do have.

So the differences between a plastic surgeon, a gas tank manufacturer, and the shoe store owner, are very small and the commonalities are far greater.

Most of Dan’s approach to time and communication and customer and client management has more to do with your mindset and decisions you make about universal principles than it does with anything “business specific”.

Everyone thinks they can’t train their customers to do business on their terms.

Everyone thinks they have to be immediately accessible to their customers and clients.

And if you look into industry after industry after industry, you’ll find at least one person in there who is violating these industry religious beliefs and are proving everyone wrong and ignorant.

Most commercial realtors would sit and argue with you that you’ve got to take the call when it comes in, certainly if someone is investing hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars with you, and that these clients insist on having your cell phone number so they can get a hold of you day or night, yet Dan has a client who’s doing the exact opposite.

Dan’s client is actually making people fill out a form and pay money to even be able to have a telephone conversation with him about becoming a client.

OH NO HE DI’INT!!!

Another one of his clients in the mortgage business who works with residential realtors who think that as soon as they’ve got a person who wants to make them an offer, they need to get a hold of their mortgage person.

Dan’s client makes a very high six-figure income in the mortgage business. He accomplishes this even though he turns his cell phone off every day at 5:00 and keeps it off during the weekend, doesn’t check messages, and has trained his realtors to work around these preferences of his.

You could find example after example after example in different industries of people doing the opposite of what the majority of the industry insists on doing.

You always determine how you want to do business with people, how you want them to do business with you and how valuable your time is to you. The question is, “Are these decisions you’ve made making your life more pleasant or more stressful?”

Time Is The Only Asset You’ve Got That Can’t Be Replaced and Replenished

In pretty much most instances, there’s more than enough prospects to be had and any client, patient, customer who leaves can be replaced by another.

If clients, patients, and customers weren’t replenishable, everyone would be out of business almost as soon as they got into business because it’s a guarantee you’re gonna lose customers, clients or patients.

They move, they die, they have a best friend who gets in the business and they decide to go do business with them, on and on.

So no matter how awesome a job you do with your marketing, your service/products and support, you’re gonna lose some people every year. And business owners who stay in business obviously are finding ways to replace those people. So replacing one or two more that leave as a result of the way you choose to do business shouldn’t be a big deal.

Money can be replaced.

Physical assets destroyed due to hurricanes, bed bugs, fire, snow storms, floods, etc. are replaced all the time.

The only thing that can’t be given back to you is the minute you just spent. And this is why this is an asset worth being pit-bull vicious about protecting.

Why Lack of Time Accountability and Measurement Leads To Horrible Results – THE MOST IMPORTANT SECTION OF THIS ENTIRE COURSE

There is no neutral in life. You’re either in drive or you’re in reverse.

If you take away accountability, your results start moving in reverse. If you impose it, it improves. Every professional sports coach knows this.

Pat Riley, former NBA coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, made famous the “Better Your Best” concept of taking stats and having players trying to beat their previous best performance. We, as entrepreneurs need to do the same thing.

The ultimate good news/bad news joke is “The good news is: You’re your own boss. The bad news is: You’ve got a REAAALLLY shitty, dysfunctional, and incompetent boss.”

An entrepreneur has a little accountability pressure in the fact that work needs to be done for clients, but there is none for the moment by moment, function by function basis.

So the only accountability available to the entrepreneur is hitting or missing time and money targets.

Most people try to get the job done with money targets alone. But it’s the time targets that make up the day to day that REALLY make it possible to hit the money targets.

If you’re waiting till the end of the month to see if you hit your sales quota or not, and then judging yourself successful or not based on your hitting it or not, you’re too late.

You want predictive indicators, not historic indicators. Predictive indicators of money are your use of your time. This is how you hold yourself accountable.

Dan talks about how the fact that he met all but one of his time targets for that day, is very predictive of what his bank balance is gonna look like at the end of the month.

If he’d missed 4 or 5 of them he’d be annoyed with himself and want to look at why this occurred. Was it faulty assessment of how long it’d take to do something? And why is that?” so that he doesn’t make the same mistake again.  Or it’s because he let something interfere with his script, and what did he let interfere and how can you make sure that doesn’t happen anymore?

Time Can Be Wasted and Abused Only To The Extent That It’s Available To Be So

So look at this scenario.

Say you’ve got a phone appointment with the person who is the #1 VIP in your life in 30 seconds – President of United States, Playboy centerfold, Nelson Mandela, client who wants to give you $280,000 dollars, your favorite Hollywood celebrity, whoever, and you’re waiting for the call and some guy in your office pokes his head in asking if you’ve got a minute.

Would you brush him off? Of course you would.

SO WHY ISN’T THE APPOINTMENT THAT YOU HAD WITH YOURSELF EVERY BIT AS IMPORTANT TO BE SAFEGUARDED THAN IS THE APPOINTMENT WITH THE POPE OR THE PRESIDENT?

When you look at it like this, it’s easier to be tough about this.

Beyond Scheduling Your Day

Dan’s days aren’t scheduled in the sense that you’ve got a page in the appointment book where there’s a meeting noted down, a lunch, and a couple of phone calls written in.

Dan’s days are scripted.

A schedule is your appointments for the day. A script is every minute of the movie that is your day. That’s the easiest way to explain what scripting your day is.

Think about it in terms of a movie script. Most people are trying to shoot a movie with just an outline. And this doesn’t work very well in Hollywood and it doesn’t work very well on the street.

You need to have everything blocked out minute-by-minute-by-minute (in hunks of minutes of course).

With a good Hollywood script, if someone is walking from the front door to their car, it’s determined how long that’s gonna take. You have to take all of this into account because you have a target for how long the film is and just the same with your day, you’ve got a fixed numbers that you’re awake and in a place you can work.

If you want maximum productivity, you want to know how long it takes from pushing the on button to your computer to having all of the programs you need to use takes so that you’re factoring that into the script that only gives you X amount of film a.k.a. your work hours to use.

The entire day. Everything that needs to be accomplished for the day is listed according to the time it’s going to take to complete, each of them totaling up to the minutes available in the time block.

Every minute of Dan’s work day is accounted for. So if he lets an interruption in, something in this script, something isn’t going to happen. Something, or someone is going to get cheated today if somebody barges in and bumps to the front of the line.

Dan is always assessing where he is on his work list, to where he is on the clock.

On most days for Dan, there is no time to be wasted or abused because he has pre-assigned it all, the day before or earlier.

Stop Getting Punked Out Of The Results You Want

When I started scripting my day according to what I valued accomplishing in my life, I found those months of my life to be incredible.

Using this practice aided me in working out four days – one day off for 52 weeks straight.

And the workouts were ball-busters. The work out for the day consisted of better-your-best timed sprinting not just walking, explosive plyometric push ups not just push ups, full out jumping knees touching my chest not just body weight squats. And two of the four days included me doing a boxing workout on top of these circuit training workouts.

On top of this, I would script out times when I was going to study marketing or copywriting for one hour every day. On top of this I demanded of myself an hour of personal development studying.

All of this on top of working in two professions.

This would’ve never been possible had I not scripted out what my day was going to look like the night before and then, lived by the script the next day. In essence, this strategy allowed me to get into the best shape of my life and feel the proudest of my body that I’ve ever felt.

And I didn’t need any fancy pants planner or software to do this. I just used a piece of paper inside a journal. Here’s a picture of what my process looked like . . .

See. No rocket science required. Just consistency.

And of course stuff came up that altered the times I would do some of these activities, but this wasn’t often at all. It was actually rare for me to be derailed. It was like the universe made way for me to get my shit done because it respected that I knew where I was going.

You’ll notice that my activities throughout the day are in “Code Names” to give them a sexier appeal. “Article Magic” sounds more appealing to me and conveys what I want the result to be far more than “article” does.

I learned to re-frame your activities like this from Tony Robbins and I could’ve done it a lot better. For example: “Fuck my relationship with my cuddle umpkins wide open to god” sounds and feels vastly different than, “Angie” does.

Everything Adds Up

What you see on the bottom below the schedule are the broad daily goals I wanted to pursue and then the evidence of them being realized that day in even the smallest way on the end of the page that showed up as a result of the activities I took action on that day.

This page was to be written out every night before I went to sleep (15-20 min.) and this way when I woke up, I hit the road running. No confusion. No wondering what was going to happen. I knew what was gonna happen and when it was going to happen and that each activity was moving me towards my becoming who I wanted to become, or feeling good about my progress because I cleaned up after myself or did some other chore.

One key factor I believe that will help you to achieve more in your day is by sleeping in a more structured fashion to give yourself more time – shorter if you sleep a lot, or longer if you barely ever sleep – than you do now. Click here to go see this post here to see how to do this.

Take Dan’s advice along with mine and try this easy one page scripting technique out for yourself and tell me what you think of the results that it brings to you. You can do this here in the comments below or hit me at my private email address that can be found in the “Contact” form at the top of the site.

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne a.k.a. Note Taking Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd

PS. If you want even more Dan Kennedy renegade millionaire productivity tips and marketing mindset strategies, you definitely want to click here now to check out these notes here . . .   

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This woman is serious about efficiency but there's a difference between efficiency and effectiveness

It’s Lewis a.k.a. Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd.

Have you ever experienced the coaching Eben Pagan dishes out live at one of his Platinum Membership Group Days? No? Well, now you have.

I have some quick productivity tips from my notes from one of these events where he revealed to the group the only three things they should be doing in an information marketing business.

These are the three activities that punch the pedal to medal and drive your small business marketing strategies to perform balls to the wall which is the fastest path to profitability.

Here’s the first tool for figuring this out . . .

1. The Productivity Pyramid

You take a triangle and break it into 4 levels.

The Top Level is labeled as “High Lifetime Value”

Level Two is labeled as “High Dollar Per Hour Value”

Level Three is labeled as “Low Value Per Hour Value”

Level Four is labeled as “Zero Value”

Because Eben can draw better than me, here’s what it looks like on paper…

Here’s how this works . . .

Zero Value Activities

In life, there’s tons of things you can do that bring ZERO value to your life. And in fact, these ZERO value activities can have a negative effect on you.

What you’ll notice is that not only is of what the majority of people are doing having zero impact on their life, it’s actually counter productive. Eating large quantities of food that offers your body no nutrition – cookies, candy, chips, etc. not only has zero value but it’s actually slowly killing you.

Laying on the couch, not moving your body is not just zero value but it actually is weakening you.Watching the news and retard television excessively, obsessively, is not only of zero value but it’s actually making you dumber.   This is what happens to you when you over-indulge in zero value activities . . .

Click here to view the embedded video.

Low Dollar Per Hour Activities

This is the $5. – $10. – $20. an hour stuff – filing, hand addressing envelopes and stamping them, cleaning the bathroom, inserting info into your spread sheets, etc.

High Dollar Per Hour Activities

This is the stuff that allows you to make $100 – $1,000 an hour for.

An example of this could be consulting for an hourly fee – in person or over the phone.

Another example of this could be connecting with affiliate partners and getting them to mail right now.

Another example is writing your copy or writing copy for others for a fee.

These are activities that make money in the short term.

High Lifetime Value Activities

This is stuff that’s urgent, but not important.

This is the stuff that can has high value over the lifetime of your business. Creating a product that’s going to be in your catalog over the next twenty years is a high lifetime value activity.

Training someone on your team, that going to run an important area of your business is a high lifetime value activity.

Making an initial connection/introduction and bringing value to an super affiliate first over weeks to months could fit into this category.

These are activities that make money in the long term.

I Think I’d Win Money Betting Your Day’s Pyramid Is Not Upside Down

So if you sit down and make a list of the things you’re doing everyday, and put them in these four quadrants, what you’ll typically find is that you’re spending the majority of your day doing zero value activities, little more time on low dollar per hour, little bit on high dollar activity, and the teeniest amount of time on high lifetime value stuff.

This is the average person’s existence, people who don’t come to sites like these and make discoveries and then take action on what they’ve found.

Your objective is turn the pyramid upside down like this . . .

You’re spending most of your day doing high lifetime value stuff, the next highest doing high dollar, next doing low dollar, and the very amount of your day is spent doing zero dollar and hour stuff.

Eben feels that in an information product business, the thing you should be doing is creating products, marketing, and relationships. That’s it.

Almost anything you’re doing outside of this is wasting your time.

Products, marketing, and relationships have high lifetime value as well as high dollar value. 

ACTION STEP:

So, what you do is take out a piece of paper and write down the list of things are within these categories and you put them in the order that you should be doing them.

Let’s say you decide after doing the specific analysis of your business, that the most important thing you could be doing is creating products. 

Maybe number two is Write Copy.

Number three might be make content videos for your blog.

And number four is Train Your Team.

A great way to start figuring out how much time you’re going to spend on each of these would be to say . . .

I’m going to spend 50% of my time doing number one . . .

I’m going to spend 25% of my time doing number two . . .

I’m going to spend 12% of my time doing number three . . .

I’m going to spend 6% of my time doing number four . . .

And leave the rest of the time to do everything else.

Of course, your situation isn’t gonna match perfectly with this but this gives a starter curve to work from and customize on your own.

If you use this formula and you’ve got ten things and you just keep cutting in half the percentage of time you spend on each activity according to most to least important, you’ll see that it makes sense.

Making The 80/20 Principle Work For You

The 80/20 principle rules your workday and everything else in life.

80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. If you go to a chicken coop 80% of the edible eggs, come from 20% of the chickens. Go into a company, 80% of the sales are coming from 20% of the sales force. This principle applies across the board.

We screw ourselves up by not saying, “I gotta eliminate 80% of my work because only 20% of it is bringing home the desired results and I gotta keep plowing the 80% into the 20%.”

When you put the 80 towards the 20, you can multiply your results by 5 times just with this one simple move.

Do This Now . . .

So now, make a list of the 7 most valuable things you do with your time in your business that are high lifetime value and high dollar per hour value. And try to skew towards high lifetime value. Focus on products, marketing, and relationships (could be relationships with partners, vendors, or employees).

Now make the list starting with highest priority activity that you do now (of course this will probably be different three years from now).

Focus here on what rings the cash register or the things you did in the past that were the difference that made the difference and prioritize them 1-7.

And now use this as your guide for planning out your day tomorrow. Just take that small step. Try it out and feel free to share with me in the comments section below or email me like you like to, what it felt like to come at your work day from this angle. 

I look forward to hearing about your experience.

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne a.k.a. Note Taking Nerd #2 a.k.a. L.L. Cool Nerd

PS. If you’re at all interested in ramping up your effectiveness in the style of relationship building Eben recommends that allows you to ramp up the effectiveness of your small business marketing strategies, you definitely want to click here now to get see these productivity tips . . .

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