Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Make Your Business Impossible to Ignore: Day with Dan Kennedy (4 of 4) | #Marketing - Ep. 18

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

In today’s episode of The Russell Brunson Show, we wrap up the final installment of Day with Dan, where Dan Kennedy and I dive deep into the sales and marketing formula behind market disruption, radical positioning, and how to attract massive attention (whether positive or negative) to dominate your industry. If you’ve ever asked yourself how industry titans like Steve Jobs, David Ogilvy, and Joe Rogan built unstoppable brands, this episode uncovers the repeatable blueprint behind their success. The reality? Becoming a true authority isn’t about playing it safe, it’s about challenging the status quo, embracing controversy, and strategically leveraging both support and opposition to your advantage. Key Highlights: Why all market leaders follow a formula - and how you can apply it The critical role of books, media, and controversy in building industry authority How opposition drives traffic and makes you impossible to ignore The real reason most entrepreneurs fail to break through, and how to avoid their mistakes Why staying “neutral” is the fastest path to irrelevance How to strategically use media, podcast guests, and partnerships to amplify your brand The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make? Trying to avoid criticism. The truth? Every industry leader, from Tony Robbins to Donald Trump, used controversy as fuel to grow. If you want to step into your man on the white horse position and become the recognized authority in your market, this episode is a masterclass in how it’s actually done. Don’t miss the conclusion of Day with Dan! https://sellingonline.com/podcast https://clickfunnels.com/podcast https://www.nobsletter.com Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/secrets Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/marketingsecrets to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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from changing the world. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome back to the show and this is the exciting conclusion of our series with Dan Kennedy. And if you guys, again, if you don't know, Dan Kennedy was my first mentor. He's how I learned marketing and sales

was originally all from Dan. And so honored to have him at this year's Funnel Hacking Live. We had a whole VIP day with him, and I've been sharing with you guys my two hour interview with him on stage. And what's cool is like, I don't talk a lot. I ask a question, I sit back and let Dan do the delivery,

and hopefully you got a lot from this interview so far. Again, we're on part number four right now, and in today's episode we're gonna wrap up the final installment of the interview. Dan and I are gonna deep dive into sales and marketing. The formulas behind market disruption, radical positioning, how to attract massive attention, whether positive or negative,

and how to dominate your industry. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode. If you haven't plugged into Dan Kennedy's world yet, if you go to NoBSLetter.com, you can go get a free subscription to his print newsletter. It's worth its weight in gold. It's like literally getting Dan Kennedy

to fly to your house once a month and teach you the best thing that he's got that month. He's been publishing this newsletter for 40 plus years. I've been a subscriber now for almost 20 and if you are just getting started now is the time to go to NoBSLetter.com and become a subscriber. That way you can learn from the man himself, Mr. Dan Kennedy. With that said, we're going to jump into the exciting conclusion of part number four of the day with Dan from Fuddle Hacking 510. I hope you guys enjoy this and then next week we'll get back to our normal podcast programming. Appreciate you all and I hope you enjoy this episode with Dan Kennedy.

Are there any other things that those of us who want to step into that and become the radical or the man of the white horse like any other things specifically you recommend people thinking about or doing is they're trying to step into that. Well so there's a lot of models so this is really pretty easy to model because it's pretty formulaic. So if you again if you think about the MLM industry and you go look at Turner, if you think about the diet industry in the 60s and 70s and you know, and really the expansion of Apple where they had to go get them and bring them back. So on and on and on.

There are a lot of models. So if you pick a category, if your category is health, if you're in the health business, there's a lot of models all the way back to the creator of chiropractic. And so that history is all there, right? In finance, there are a lot of models all the way back to the bookstore, Baldwin, that you and I were at, not at the same time, but we were there yesterday. The rare bookstore at the Venetian, there's a book, The Stock Market, that knew something like that, right? And it's from 1930. And I'm not going to remember the author's name, but he was a big heretic at the time about investing.

So there's these models kind of in every category. the instruction manuals for the aftermath of it, the man on the white horse position. Eric Hoffer's book, The True Believer is one of the basics, the fundamentals for people specifically in the information, one way to make a living, the Lyman Wood book would be another one. So there's no shortage of things to look at, understand what each part was and replicate it. was and replicated probably 80%. There's a book involved. Somebody did a book and they promoted a book. in the advertising industry, right?

Early disruptors of agency models and advertising strategies, Ogilvy would be one of them. They all wrote a book explaining themselves and their radical ideas. So Ogilvie on advertising is Ogilvie's explanation of what he believes, why he believes it and at the time it was very contrary to Traditional advertising so when Ogilvy said if you don't have a big idea Don't waste your money on advertising Most advertising of the time had no big ideas It was just basic brand

Advertising, you know not much more than a logo and a picture of a building. And we've been in business since 1936. There's your ad, right? So he was pretty big heretic and very theatrical. Ogilvy, most of the time in New York, he roamed around wearing a cape. And he drove a big ass Rolls Royce, killed himself to get the Rolls Royce ad account,

which he said was a terrible account to have. Very hard to advertise Rolls Royces. He did come up with a great ad, of course. But so he used to park this thing have, very hard to advertise Rolls Royce's. He did come up with a great ad of course. But so he used to park this thing right in front of his office illegally every day, pay the tickets and go to lunch or a great big velvet cape and a book. So you will almost 80% of the time in any of the models you see, you're going to find a book.

Now, only in the contemporary models are you going to find podcast, YouTube channel, right? You're going to find the new media as well as the book used in the same way, right? It allows people to find you but to get them to go look you have to stir up all this where they already are. So like a lot of people have abandoned trade journal advertising in niches and they shouldn't have because it's a great place to start this. Readership is still about 20% of an association and the rates are cheap because people are abandoning print, you know, and so forth. J Abraham had an ad he used a number of times. It's really a great ad.

I think Halbert wrote it, but I'm not sure. He used it in insurance and he used it in medical. The headline was, who is this man and why is he saying these terrible things about your profession? Or who is this man and why is he saying these terrible things about your business. And he would then play this game in the ad, right? And with a little time, of course, opposition arose and he would quote the ad, and now add the opposition to the ad, right? And it was a, they were great lean generation campaigns. Now in today's world, an ad like that would be a lot more productive because there's a lot more ways for the curious

to go find him and start to, you know, get cooked in his environment. That ad will drive people to Amazon, it will drive people to TikTok, it will drive people to LinkedIn, it will drive people. And so as long as you're there, that ad now is infinitely more productive than it was pre-internet. You know, as I think you know, the you know, there's three media choices, right? There's online only, there's offline only, and there's integrated media. And the only sensible one is integrated, you know, is integrated media. Because you know, is integrated media because each media always creates spin-off traffic to other

media and if you aren't there to capture it, that drives traffic. And as long as you're there to get it and then carry that message forward, you benefit from all the opposition. It takes a lot longer than any market to get famous by getting famous than by getting famous and infamous, the infamy helps. It's so early, when we ran the first personal power show, the first Tony show at Kathy Wanker. The psychiatric professional community and the psychologists professional community, the therapist professional community, has that thing got traction, they all got pretty vocal in their criticism. Well, I mean, look, their argument was uncredentialed, right?

Therefore risky could really hurt some people. Same thing for Warner and Aarons and Ast, which preceded Tony. And he's insisting he can bring somebody up on stage and instantly cure some chronic phobia they've had for years that we treat for years. You know, Woody Allen's, if you have, if we have any in the audience, I'm sorry, but you know, Woody Allen's line about therapists was always, I got the best one in New York. I've had him, I've been going to him every week for 30 years. Like Tony's curing us like this. You know that you, I'm sure you saw him, the instant orgasm thing, right? From Tony?

Yeah, yeah. That's really funny. Good punch line. Yeah, but she was due. Yeah, right, okay. So there was a lot of griping, right? Well, so what did that do? It sent people, the restless native, the patient who's in his seventh year and still has the same problem he had when he

started, the professional who's questioning what he or she has been told about how to do the profession, it sent them to go investigate. Investigate. And then the more places you are, because different people go different places, the more places you are, the more you benefit. And that's why this last time around, like Trump was everywhere. I mean everywhere. You couldn't avoid it. And people start, well, that actually makes sense.

You know? Alright Funnel Hackers, let me ask you something. How much of your life is online? Think about it. You're running ads, managing funnels, buying domains, logging into your bank account apps, and probably even watching your favorite streaming platform while working on your next funnel. Am I right? But here's the problem.

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And here's where it gets even better. NordVPN has over 7100 servers in 118 countries. So if I need to check out content that's geo-blocked, like a UFC match where I'm traveling or any kind of sporting event or a sales page in another country, no problem. One click and my location switches instantly. Funnel hackers, don't take chances with your data. To get the best discounts off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash Russell. That's NordVPN.com slash R-U-S-S-E-L-L. Our link gives you four free extra months

on the two-year plan and there's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast description box. Stay protected and stay ahead. Hey, it's Russell Brunson and I have a confession to make. When I first started in B2B marketing, I thought I needed to be everywhere at once. Every platform, every ad type. But guess what? That's not where the magic happens. The magic happens where the decision makers are, and that is LinkedIn. LinkedIn ads let you target who you want.

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you this ever, ever, because we all hate the guy. But I voted for him because if I separate him from his policies, they all make sense to me. Right? Well, how would that happen? She would have to consume some of him to get to that point, right? So I'm sure here's the media probably that she consumes all the time. MSNBC probably gets a bunch of stuff from like-minded people in social media. And what did all that do? of keeping her away from Satan, it made her go take a look at Satan. Right? So the opposition is useful.

And I've always gone out of my way to trigger it, to have it against position, to have a vellum, all of that. If you take any No BS book, any of the titles, they all have this early in the book, there is an establishment, archaic villain established and then attacked And then the alternative system, you know, is offered to you. The Ruthless Management book has gotten the most negative stuff. Reviews, you know, all that. Mostly the people have read it. They just don't like the word ruthless. I'm deadly serious about that, by the way. But I'd almost rather have the negative reviews than the positive ones. Because I know what effect it has on people, right?

It's like, well, I got to take a look at this guy, right? And a lot of people don't have the courage to play this game. But when you understand its architecture and then you start looking for it, you find it used again and again and again. That's not an ad that you would love. For this book that's coming out, it's like a mind control persuasion book. And the ad was basically, it was two Amazon reviews, one was five stars. Like this is the greatest book I've ever read on mind control.

Then the second one was this book should be banned and burned. And the headline was both of these are right. And it's like, I keep seeing that ad running and running. I'm like, man, it's such a good dad. Well, see years ago the Catholic Church used to be in movies. So they used to tell everybody, I know this because my first wife was Catholic, they used to put out a list of movies that Catholics should not see. And I always thought, do you idiots know what you're doing? Say, because I can tell you right now that you're succeeding with some, but you're driving a whole bunch of people to the theater to

see this movie, who probably wouldn't have gone otherwise. They banned The Exorcist when it came out, the original movie The Exorcist, which was basically a junk horror movie that my guess is would have died at the box office if the Catholic Church had made such a big stink about it and told everybody stay away from this thing. And I remember thinking this is they're the greatest sales force for this movie ever. You can't beat this, right? I mean this is like your parents telling you, you know, don't read this book. What are you going to do? You're all going to read the book, right? I mean, I was a little kid. I don't know how old, but probably, let's see, 60. It was probably right around 63 that the original Peyton Place novel came out. It's big deal. You're even too young probably. Yeah Scandalous this book

And There's my small town and everybody in it had secrets And a lot of sexual overtones and Fiction but and a lot of sexual overtones and fiction but based on real people, in fact a bunch of people sued. And so it was the Housewives Hidden Book of the year, right? They all had it and they all hid it somewhere and they all read it. A contemporary phenomenon might have been Fifty Shades of Grey for the first six months or so, right? Which is a very funny book. I don't know that they meant it for comedy but you know, you go, most wives go ask the husband to tie her up in bed, he will,

and then he'll go get a sandwich and watch the game in peace. That's what's gonna happen, you know. It's not, oh, oh and you know and all that. And it took me about a day to find it but I found it. And it turns out pretty much every kid I knew had found his mother's book and was reading some of it and putting it back and reading some of it and putting it back. And that's great amortizing, right? And this is the opposite of being dominated by disapproval. You actually create disapproval to use disapproval. Maybe it's a copywriter to help you crank out more sales pages or designer to refresh your landing pages or someone to do customer support to help you to handle your growing

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So go over to wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets, grab your 70% off deal and let's start turning your clients into long-term revenue. Again, that's wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets. Do not miss out. I think that about a third of Trump is doing these things, mostly little ones, mostly to entertain himself and to create another blast of this kind of conversation. And it's amazing to me how the media always bites. It's just incredible. So a couple of days ago, I guess, he was asked, because there's some rumors about Prince Harry having lied on his visa application about ever using drugs or something.

So somebody asked Trump, one of his, he answers questions pretty much all the time, somebody asked him if it turned out that it was true if he would deport Prince Harry. Now there's any number of ways you could normally if you were a normal person you would handle that question. He says no he's got enough trouble with that wife of his, she's terrible. Now, this is really not worth being remarked upon, but hours of media time, how dare he, and you know, the relationship between America and England will be forever severed. They're on fire about this. I just want to answer, when it goes to his head, does he say to himself, this will be

fun? Right? I'll just throw this out there. Or does it not even... Is there no edit mechanism at all? I don't know. I'd love to ask you. Because there's a lot of it, right?

And it accumulates. And it's actually magnetic. People sort of, well, maybe I'll start paying attention to this guy, right? Because that was funny, right? I wonder what else he's going to say today. have to not care about the disapproval. And that's so contrary. It's why you see this model, this model is not, I didn't make it up. So you see this model over and over and over again, but you don't see it commonly used because if everybody used it, it would disintegrate, it would have no power.

Because most people, business people, are hypersensitive to any disapproval. And they are in an exercise of futility. They are seeking no disapproval. And first of all, it can't be done. So you can't do it even if you try, you know. I mean, there are people who don't like vanilla ice cream. I mean, I think it's hard to be opposed to it, but there are people who will give you a 30-minute lecture on vanilla ice cream, as you know, terrible. on live vanilla ice cream is you know terrible. And there's people that don't like anything else right? So you can't get to a hundred percent, you can't even get to a hundred percent neutrality, a hundred percent ambivalence you can't even get to let alone a hundred percent approval. So you're not going to get there no matter what you do and

You're never going to be The talk of the town because of that If that worked In 2016 Jeb Bush would have been president. Well, because that's what he is and that's what he fashioned himself to be. Nothing to object to but nothing period period, either. Right? Nothing to really get excited about one way or the other.

I think, like the NFL has figured this out with halftime shows, I think they're deliberately doing shows that a lot of people talk about as the worst one ever. And people are tuning in to see how bad and offensive it can possibly be. And then they like complaining about it for three or four days, right? Because otherwise you wouldn't do what they've done the last couple of years. So this is contrary to sort of the way we are taught to behave really from childhood And like nobody drives 50 miles to get vanilla ice cream either, right? It's just not a big thing. And so if you're vanilla, if you try and do it all positive, so if you look at media, for a time the two highest paying broadcasters ever were Limbaugh

and Howard Stern. And then when Howard went to satellite that ended that. But when they were both on AM radio, they had the two biggest audiences. And obviously not a lot in common other than the fact that they said triggering controversial things that then got multiplied out into other media go take a look mmm and Highly disapproved of right in both cases Howard had has Some women fans, but you know not a lot. It's it's pretty much a guys You know a guys club.

And Limbaugh, he didn't have any liberal fans women who have very negative reactions to him and the ones that listen complain amongst their friends and the same was true of Limbaugh. So again, if you're looking for a model, you're looking at not the pleasant morning AM radio host who—there's three of them on the show, kind of the today show of radio, and they do the weather and they do the traffic and they talk about local community events and here's what we know about those people. They're never going to get rich. They're never going to move up the media ladder. They're going to be in local media their entire lives.

And most people from one week to the next don't even know they exist. As they age in their careers, the most common question asked amongst people in their community is, are they still alive? I didn't think that guy was still alive. Is he still alive? I thought The model is Limbaugh, the model is Starr, right? And you would go back to Limbaugh day one forward, Howard day one forward, in order what they had done if you wanted to become a top ten in a radio personality or now podcast personality, right? I mean Rogan's model, all the secrets are visible, right? Now you've got to go all the way back to Rogan Day One and follow the model all the way forward, but there's nothing hidden, right? All of his secrets are visible.

And one of the things he does is he says controversial things and he has people on who are greatly disapproved of and then that gets multiplied out through the media, right? A lot of symbiosis going on. Right? So, yeah, he really helped Trump. Or Trump really helped him. Whole new audience, you know, in both directions. So what does that tell you? So that tells you if you are using a podcast as part of your media, make sure you have

some people on it who offend a bunch of people. No, I'm deadly serious. No, no, no, I'm not kidding. There's no point in having somebody on that everybody's going to forget after the vanilla ice cream is gone. And they're not going to multiply out through other media. What's the point? No. We know, have somebody on that a lot of people disagree with and disapprove of, who can hold their own for two or three hours, preferably have an audience they bring, but even if they

don't, because having that happen will bring more attention to you than having the approved of person on will bring attention to you. Association we'll talk later about cast the characters, but one of the things about this model and association is radical with radical, heretic with heretic, and not just positive, but also negative, Not just positive, but also negative, because you want noise. You want to be talked about in a multiplied way almost no matter how you are talked about When Halbert was Was he never actually got on but Johnny talked about his his family crest letter

And about Halbert has a guy who claims to be the world's greatest copywriter and that this letter has been mailed more than any other letter and it gives you your family crest and so I answered it, I got the family crest and it's a complete scam and it's rip off and it's silly and Halbert said you can't get better press. He said it I'm the only copywriter ever mentioned on The Tonight Show in the history of the entire Tonight Show. Direct marketers, companies who would touch me before are calling wanting me to write copy. Because Carson says, I wrote copy so good, I could steal money from anybody.

Well, the phone's ringing off the hook. Now, if it had been nice, wouldn't have had near the impact. So, when we started, you ask about fear. And most of the reason people won't use this model is that they're afraid of it. And what they're really afraid of is vocal and visible disapproval. Yeah. Well, I think we're at the end of the session and that was amazing.

Should we all give Dan a huge round of applause? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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