Some of my biggest insights after spending a day at Dan Kennedy's house.

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What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.

Today I want to tell you guys about my experience with Dan Kennedy. I hired him for a private consult day, and I want to tell you behind the scenes. What happened, what was cool, what was... Anyway, just all the things. So that's the goal of this episode.

All right, everybody. As I told you guys in the intro, I had a chance this week to fly out and hang out with Dan Kennedy, which was really, really cool. And I want to tell you guys a story, because there's a couple things behind it. I remember back when I first got into this business, people were always talking about how Dan released private consult days, it was $18,800. That was the price then. And I remember thinking, "I can't believe someone's paying him $18,000 to go to his house, to talk to him for a day." It didn't make any sense to me at the time, right?

And I always thought, "Someday, when I'm rich, I'm going to do that." And for some reason I never did. It's interesting. For years, probably a decade or so, I always thought about that, "Oh, it'd be so cool to go to Dan's house and ask him my questions." I always wanted to, but again, I just never did it. And I still remember to this day when I was in my penthouse writing the Traffic Secrets book, when I got a call from one of my friends telling me that Dan was about to pass away. And some of you guys know the story, a couple years ago he almost died, and then he didn't.

But I remember one of the feelings I had when I got that call. It was like, "Oh, I'll never be able to do that." I had a shot, I could have done it, and I never did it. I was just kind of just bummed out I never did it. And then fast forward, he didn't die. Fast forward a couple years later, we ended up buying this company. In my contract, I was like, again, all things I want to do. I want to co-author a book with you. I want to blah, blah, blah. And one of the big ones was I want to come in and do a consult day, every single year just to like... and so that's part of my contract now.

So once a year I get to go out to his house and hang out for a day. And so that was kind of the backstory. So you've been planning it and talking about it and finally, it happened. And it's funny because I'm not the best scheduler or planner. It's not my strong suit. Anyway, we were kind of planning it all and I was going to fly out there and everything was happening.

And then I realized that the weekend I was supposed to go out there... Actually let me step back. So Dan messaged me ahead of time and said, "Hey, if you want," he's like, I was supposed to be there on a Monday. He was like, "If you want, Sunday's open, you come out Sunday. And if you want to buy two consult days, you can do that." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that'd be amazing." So I said yes, and we bought it.

And then those of you who know, I'm Mormon and in the Mormon church, we have a thing called general conference. Happens twice a year, and it's basically a church on TV all day, Saturday and Sunday. And for us, it's the coolest thing. We get to spend time with our family and our kids. And we watch it together and we eat donuts and it's this special moment. And I didn't realize that until I told my wife. I'm like, "Kim, I'm going to be flying out to Dan's house on Friday," or excuse me, on Saturday. I'll be there all day Sunday and Monday working with him."

And then she was like, "You realize this is general conference that weekend." I'm like, "Oh no, I can't. I can't miss that." And so anyway, I ended up sending Dan usher on my team to go fly out. And in Sunday, he went and filmed with Dan for a whole day. Just like capturing stuff that we can use for promotional videos and Dan telling his story and just a bunch of really cool things. And so then I had to figure how to get there. And there's no private flights to Cleveland, Ohio from Boise, Idaho, Sunday night after conference is done.

So we had to book a private plane. It was really expensive. It took the consult day from $18,800, which is what he charged, he still charges to this day, actually. It ended up adding, I think, $52,000 to the flight. So hopefully someday my kids will watch this and like, "Man, your dad loves you. He spent actually $52,000 so he wouldn't miss general conference with you."

But anyways, so it was cool. So we ended up flying that night at nine o'clock at night, but it's going to Cleveland. I think it's East Coast time, right? So it's like already 11 o'clock by the time I leave, and landing in Cleveland, and then we had to drive almost an hour to my hotel. Long story short, I ended up getting to bed about 5:00 AM and the consult started next morning. So 5:00 AM I'm going to bed, and eight o'clock the alarm rings. I'm like, "Oh, three hours of sleep. Let's go."

It's funny because every time people talk about going to Dan's house... We stayed at the LaQuinta, which is just the worst hotel ever. And sure enough, we got there and it was the worst hotel I've ever stayed at. It was funny because I think normally I would've been annoyed by that, but part of it was the romance of going to Kennedy and you stay in this nasty hotel and you do the things.

As I got in the hotel at 5:00 in the morning, the little awning above the hotel is falling in, and then you go in there. It was just thing after thing. I was like, "This is literally the worst hotel I've ever been in." Dan was true to his word. But because it was so cool, I was just smiling the whole time like, "This is so cool." I think the worst experience would've been, the better that would've made the experience for me, just because that's what I was banking on.

In fact, I told my assistant, Jenny, she was booking it. She's like, "You don't want to stay there. You should stay over here." I'm like, "No, we have to stay at the LaQuinta. That's where everybody stays when they go see Dan. It's part of the experience. I have to have it." So we did that. Anyway, three hours later, I wake up and we drive down to Dan's thing. Anyway, it was just really cool because it was hanging out with Dan Kennedy.

And we go to his house, we went down the basement, and the basement in his house, it's like an office, right? I don't think his wife goes down there. I think it's like, this is Dan's area, and this is our house, it's above it. We go down there and there's a conference room with a mastermind table with chairs all around it and there's dozens and dozens of bookshelves. It was really, really cool.

And so we started the tour and he showed me the books. You guys know I'm a book nerd. Those who are watching the video version, this is... I'm in the Napoleon Hill room right now. All my book collections. I am obsessed with books. In fact, let me Google, there's a disorder for people who are obsessed with books. I think it's called biblio... something. See if I can figure it out. Bibliomania.

Bibliomania is a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder, which involves the collecting or even hoarding of books to the point where social relations... I got to read the rest of this. Yeah. Where social relations or health can be damaged. So apparently I have bibliomania, and Dan did too, so I feel like I'm in good spot. We're both obsessed with books and we collect them all. So it was fun to see them all. I literally took pictures of every bookshelf. I'm like, "I have about half these books, half of them I don't. I need to remember the name and the author." So I'm on eBay and trying to find the first editions of all these things. So that was really fun.

We sat down and we get down to... Okay, we sit in little tables, had to do my consult. And he's like, "Well, how can I be helpful? What do you want to talk about?" And I look around and sure enough, I forgot my notebook. I didn't bring my notebook to Cleveland, Ohio. And I had nothing to take notes on. I'm like, "Can I borrow a notepad?" He had his notepad and he ripped out all his notes and gave me this.

For those watching the video, this is Dan Kennedy's notepad. I took my notes on my consult day with him, which is so cool. So I can never throw this away. I can never wash my hands because this is Dan notepad where I mapped out my plans with Dan while I was with him. It was cool.

Initially it was just cool because we just talked about business. I had some questions I want to ask him, but from 9:00 AM until 1:00, it was just him talking and going on things. It was just fascinating. Again, it was just like you could share things and talk about history and then this, and how this worked and I'd be like, "Oh, well how'd that work?" That first half of the day was just him going on in these tangents and me asking questions to figure things out. And then we had lunch and then afterwards he's like, "So did you have specific things you want to talk about?" I'm like, "Oh, yes. I do."

So I had my questions. So the questions I asked him, this is tough. What would you ask Dan Kennedy, right? You see me as, since I've done the consults with Tony Robbins twice. I've actually another one next month, which is cool. They're always like, "Ask Tony any one question you have." That's like the hardest thing. What question would you ask him? So when you guys had a moment with Dan Kenny, what question would you ask him? So my questions were basically like, number ones. If you own ClickFunnels, what would you do with it? Tell me, your Dan Kennedy, let me know, which is really cool. Another one's like, "Hey, I obviously... The front ends of my business are books. I'm going to continue to write books. I love books. What are other ways that you would market books?" I'm like, "Obviously, we drive a lot of traffic from Facebook and Instagram, then YouTube and Google. So the four major platforms is 90% of our book sales come from those. What are other things you would do to sell more books?"

And then I can't remember the question. Those are the two core questions. Then I had to ask some questions about big Peter Little events to success events. If I was to go and launch at a front end event company, what would it look like? How would it work? And so those are some of the questions, but it was cool. And then he just went... "Oh, hold on, let me show you something," goes over his filing cabinets and pulls out like, "Here's how we did this," this campaign, this campaign, "And here's how this worked."It was really, really cool.

One thing that was really fascinating is... It's interesting. I learned this initially, I think I've learned it from Jay Abraham. Jay Abraham was really good at taking concepts from other industries and bringing them to yours, and Dan does the same thing. So what was cool is I'm like, "Okay, we have, obviously, ClickFunnels and we have the books and things. We're trying to figure how do we get into businesses and get them to give us... The Vietnam become members," and stuff like that. And he's shown us this campaign that I think it's Jay Geier who does it. It was interesting because what Jay Geier does is he helps people fix... The chiropractor, the dentist, who you call on for an appointment and the person picks up the phone and that person who's supposed to be the receptionist, who's supposed to do the sale and convert the person, instead, becomes the person who's blocking the sale, right? They do these campaigns where basically they call the dentist. They call them four or five times over two week period of time. They record all these phone calls and they create this package.

It's like, "Hey, we called your office. Do you want to hear what it sounded like?" And then there's a CD where you listen to, you're like, "Oh my gosh, my front desk are morons. They're doing this all wrong. There's no scripting." And they come in like, "Hey, if you want, we can help train your person, give them the script," blah, blah, blah. Implement it all. Do it all for you. I think it's like, I can't remember. I think there's a different package, like $3,000, $5,000, and $15,000 or something. And they built a, I think he said like a 50 million year business off of this thing. Literally cold calling the receptionist, recording it, sending this direct mail piece out and that was it.

And he was like, "You could do something similar with their website." Instead of "Hey, we called your receptionist." Like, "Hey, we went to your website and here's what we found. Here's where you're losing money. Here's," do website reviews for people. There's a million different cool things. But he's just showing me, for example, here's how it's working over here in this industry. Here's how you could do something similar. And I'm like, "Oh." Gets the wheels in your head spinning of tons of different ideas.

The book marketing was interesting too. For me, again, we focus so much on the online stuff and he was just like, "Well, your books specifically work for different industries." He's like, "If I was you, I would go find the industry magazines," or industry... Not magazines, they're call newsletters. And he's like, "Every industry has one." There's one for dentists, for chiropractors, for restaurant owners for blah, blah. Every single one's got one. He's like, "You got that." Create a campaign or an ad to these things which is like, "Hey, your website sucks. You need a funnel." Hey, real estate agent, hey, whatever the industry thing is. It's not like you're going to get the volume you're getting out of everything but it gives you a chance to penetrate through all of these other submarkets. You get deep into them, which was really fascinating.

We talked about radio a lot. He said that radio's different back in the day when Limbaugh was the biggest ones. He's like, "That would be huge." He was the A player. That if you got on Limbaugh, it was game over. And he's like, nowadays, there's not an A player. Basically, conservative radio is the best places to sell books and things like that. He said there's no A players. There's no Limbaugh anymore, but there's a whole bunch of B and C players. And he's like, "I would go and I'd start on C players and run ads." Those are way cheaper. You can test things out. And if you get work, you then move up to the B players and start running the ads there. And I was like, "Well, how do you run ads nowadays?" Do you run them to a call? A phone center? Do you run them to a website? We went back and forth on that.

I think what was interesting is... I told him I've seen a bunch of campaigns recently. That supplement companies are doing more... The call to action is like, "Hey, text this number and we'll send you a link to whatever." It's like a text to website URL. And what's cool about that is you text them and you're able to send them back URL. It hits them on their phone. They have it. It's also not like they have to remember, "Okay, trafficseekers.com, trafficseekers.com." Like I'm going to go to the page, I'm going to go to it and they write it down and they forget about it, right? They just have to text you real quick. Boom, you shoot the link and then the link's there in their phone all the time. You get people who... Even they don't convert right then, they convert later. But then also you have a text list. Now you can send text follow ups and urgency scarcity. All the things we do you in marketing.

That got me thinking like... There's just so many opportunities. An ad works, you click to go to website. It's one thing. But when you're not, think about radio, even podcasts. People listen to podcasts when they're driving. Billboards. There's a million things where going to website URL is not that efficient as opposed to texting. Text blah, blah, blah, to blah, blah, blah. And then we'll send you a link to your free book. They do that and all of sudden, now you got them on a list. And I was like, "Oh." Anyway, I think one of my big takeaways I want to build out a really good friend end texting campaign that I can start running now in all these different platforms and different alternative medias that we're not doing right now. Oh, so many cool things.

He talked about the old Peter Low events, how they used to run those. The format was interesting. They spend about a million dollars per event to get 20,000 people into a stadium. And then they'd have a couple different people there. They always have someone who's a world leader. So they had Trump, or excuse me, not Trump. They did have Trump for a while, but they would have like George Bush or Colin Powell or something like that. They'd try to get a business person, an entertainment person, and then a sports person. The sports person, usually local celebrities. So they're in Boise, Idaho, they'd find who's the quarterback of Boise state that we can get, or the old quarterback. Or if they're in Chicago, it's like who's the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Bears guy. Whoever they know that we can bring.

All these speakers were like the draw to get people to come to these big events and then they would have a famous person speak. Dude come in and speak to cell. The famous person speaks, speak to cell. That was the whole model. They said that they would do an event, cost a million dollars, do the event, they clear 1.5 million from the event, but there was no real back into that business ever.

So for me, "I'm like, man, I wonder if I could create something," because we've got such a good back with ClickFunnels. We create something like that. Anyway, I have a desire to do it. I don't know if I'm going to, but I do have a desire to try to do a big, huge mega event on the front end where they come in. And again, you get... I was even thinking like, what if... You guys know, at Funnel Hacking Live a couple years ago, Lindsay Sterling came and performed. It was this concert. Imagine teaming up with someone who's a band, right? And doing success event or whatever the events are, and having the band be the thing at the end, everyone stays towards, right? Then you work the band, they got the cost they got to do anyway to fill the event. Now, you piggyback off of them and they're... That might be horrible I did. But it might be amazing, I'm not sure.

Anyway, I have this thing in my head where I'm trying to figure out how to do a big front end event like that. Especially with... I'm working on our success brand, our success business where it could be twofold. When it comes to the event, like first half's like success. We sell success stuff. And then the second half is contribution and then boom, we sell the business stuff and then we have a big concert at the end. We hit all the major cities and it'd be crazy.

But I didn't realize the Peter Low events... I thought it was something maybe once a month they did it but they were doing like two or three a week. Kennedy even was on the road, it was like, boom, boom, boom. Place to place, place, place. So he was hanging out with George Bush Sr., and Barbara Bush. He told all these stories about them, it was funny. Two, three times a week, they were in a different city. Meetings, speaking, hanging out. And that was kind of how the whole tour worked and how they all made money back then, which was was crazy.

And then basically said that during Peter Low event days, they used to hit four bad events in a row happened. Because one was 9/11 hit, and then something else hit in like four, five events in a row. It just bankrupt the company. Because, again, they had no backend. All the money was happening at the events. So when they have four events in a row that you don't get your million bucks back, it falls apart. But anyways, it's fascinating.

Oh! One principle we talked about that was really cool. If you guys ever studied Renegade Millionaire, the course and the events, everything that Dan did with Renegade Millionaire, he talks a lot about these two things. He mentioned, again, he's like, "There's the future," like "There's a current bank and there's the future bank." The current bank is the money you're getting today and then the future bank is the equity you're putting in to your list, to your customers, to make money in the future. Most companies focus on the current bank. Here's I'm making money today. And he's like, "The best businesses, they make deposits in the current bank," that's the money you make today, right? And then they're also putting deposits in the future bank, which is the relationship with your customers and the people. So they keep coming back over and over and over and over again.

Simple concept, but just the way he explained it, I was just like, "Oh." I wrote that down. My future bank is the long term equity in your company and then the current bank. You have to bring people in current bank and then you're making deposits into this future bank.

What else? What else? Oh, there's so many cool things.

Oh, okay. I got something cool for you. This will be kind of the last thing. I'll probably wrap on this. So this is the most interesting.

So we're in Dan Kennedy's basement. We're down there. He's got the computers, I probably saw the fax machine. I got a picture by the fax machine. All kinds of stuff. But I asked him... Well, not asked him. He could volunteer but he's just like, "Hey, there's no internet access down here." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah. I'm not connected with the internet." And I know if you guys heard me tell stories about Dan, he faxes, he doesn't have an email address, things like that. But not only does he not have an email address, he does not have internet access. Literally no internet. He couldn't check email if he wanted to because there's no... He types. His computers are typewriters basically. Types, prints it out, walks to the fax, and he faxes it to somebody.

His wife has internet but he doesn't use it. Then the basement there's no... None of his computers are hooked to the internet. Is this crazy? I was like, "Well, how do you research for your books?" And he kind of points around all the books. He's like, "This is my research here." And he looked to me, he's like, "How do you research for your books?" He's like, "When you're on the internet, don't you feel like you're standing in the middle of a strip club? How are you able to focus?" I was like, "That's a good point." In fact, so much so that now I came back and... I told you guys earlier, I'm in the Napoleon Hill room.

My plan is every day, I'm spending the first half day here where there's no internet access. I mean, there is internet, but I'm not connected. There's no people to talk to. I'm just here writing and working and trying to get stuff done because I'm sure I'm like you, I get distracted all over the place. So I have to literally... My team knows, I'll be in the office after lunch, but before lunch, I'm here in a spot where there's no internet so I can record podcasts. I can write, I can plan. I can all the things that I need to do.

Anyway, it made me excited to also figure how do I... I need to disconnect more. Disconnect from social, disconnect from internet. Disconnect more so I can get more stuff done. So anyway, I get a lot of stuff done but I want to get more, just like you guys.

So anyway, there's some of the highlights from my time with Dan.

Oh, for those in network marketing, he showed the two things that blew Herbalife up. Number one was the pin like, "Want to lose weight? Ask me how. Ask me how I did it." And he's like that initiated conversations. That got people that asked the Herbalife distributors because they couldn't get them to go out there and to like, "Hey, do you want to lose weight?" Or "Hey, do you want..." Having something like that was number one and number two, this was fascinating. There's a lesson here for somebody.

Is that they would have on TV a late night infomercial but it was more like an opportunity meeting. It was interesting because they didn't make money from the opportunity meeting, right? It wasn't like a direct response infomercial where they're making money directly. Instead what it was... It was an opportunity. So people at home around the world would get their friends and family and say, "Hey, Sunday night, we're doing this thing, come over house and watch it together." They'd come together, turn on the TV, they'd watch it. And then the infomercial was the opportunity meeting and they'd sign up their friends there in the house. And that was their model.

That's so cool! I think there's something there. If I own a network marketing company, I would definitely exploit that and do it where... Do a Facebook live every Saturday night or Sunday night. That's literally just the opportunity meeting and have the entire company bring people to that meeting over and over again. I may try to do something similar for affiliates or for our new funnel builders, which is the new thing coming up I can't tell you about, or I don't know. I haven't figured out how to leverage that yet but I thought that was really, really cool. That Herbalife did that for a decade or so. That's how they grew.

So much fun. So many fun things.

So I hope that helps you guys. Hopefully, you got a glimpse of some of the cool things I learned about with Dan Kennedy. It was everything I hope for and more. You'll be able to see the production, the what happens afterwards coming back in this year and the near future side of our companies. Appreciate you guys all for listening. If you enjoy this, let us know. And if you're not subscribed to the No B.S Newsletter, you must make money, that's the only logical explanation. Go to nobsletter.com, go get subscribed. You hear from me and Dan twice a month so that's all I got.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you and we'll see you soon. Bye.

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