Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The Secret to Theatrical Marketing: Day with Dan Kennedy (3 of 4) | #Marketing - Ep. 17

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, we’re diving deeper into how to break into a market, dominate an industry, and attract massive attention - even if it means creating controversy along the way. This is part three of my Day with Dan interview from Funnel Hacking Live 10, and today, we’re talking about the power of positioning, theatrical marketing, and leveraging opposition to your advantage. If you’ve ever wondered why some brands skyrocket while others stay stuck, this episode reveals the hidden playbook behind disruptive marketing. The truth? The biggest names in business didn’t just fit in… They made themselves impossible to ignore!. Key Highlights: Why every successful disruptor needs a big villain - and how to position yourself against it The power of stunts and theatrical marketing (and why playing it safe is the fastest way to be forgotten) How controversy fuels attention, authority, and customer loyalty Why industry opposition can be your greatest asset (if you know how to use it) The psychology behind “restless natives” - the hidden market waiting for someone to challenge the status quo Most entrepreneurs focus on gaining approval, but the real winners embrace resistance. The biggest opportunities don’t come from playing by the rules - they come from rewriting them!! If you’re looking to build an unshakable brand, create movements instead of just marketing, and use opposition as a growth strategy, this is the episode you need to hear! 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

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for total fund savings adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good,

but you suck at selling. If you wanna learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next Selling Online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everyone, this is Russell.

Welcome back to the show. Excited to be hanging out with you guys and Dan Kennedy today. We are moving on to part three of my day with Dan interview from Funnel Hacking Live 10. And hopefully you enjoyed number one. Number two, if you missed them, I'd go back and do it. It's all part of a two hour series we did.

All about becoming the radical in your market and your industry and changing everything and getting people to follow you. And it's, I don't know, Dan Kennedy is the best. I love it. So if you are not our Dan Kennedy student or fan yet, hopefully these interviews are helping you. And I'm excited for this one today.

So this is part three of my interview. During this session we talk about the power of positioning, theatrical marketing, and leveraging opposition to your advantage. And if you ever wondered why some brands skyrocket while a lot of others get stuck, this episode's gonna reveal the hidden playbook behind disruptive marketing.

And that's what we're gonna be talking about. And a lot of people are like, well is this stuff Dan's talking about actually real? Just so you know, Dan was my number one coach and mentor. I was in Smash Mines groups for six years, Him and Bill Glazer, before we launched ClickFunnels. As I listened to ClickFunnels, I listened literally to Dan Kennedy almost every single day.

I have every course, every book, every product, and I listen to him over and over again because I wanted to always get in the mindset of Dan. So most of the movement we built was based on the teachings I learned from my man and Mr. Dan Kennedy. So I had a chance a couple years ago to buy his company and get close with him and just spend one of the coolest things ever. And one of the coolest things we do as part of Dan's company is we have a monthly print newsletter. I know you may be thinking that's out of date, like we do as part of Dan's company is we have a monthly print newsletter.

I know you may be thinking that's out of date, like we don't do print things anymore, but it's amazing. We've got a couple thousand active members who subscribe to it and every single month they get this newsletter in the mail. It's literally like getting a seminar from Dan Kennedy every single month. It's cool because it's not digital. It's cool because it's like you get it and you can unplug from the computer, your phone, everything, and just sit down and actually read.

I know a lot of us forgot how to read, but it's really powerful. It's like you get it and you can unplug from the computer, your phone, everything, and just sit down and actually read. I know a lot of us forgot how to read, but it's really powerful. So readers are leaders, and the best stuff to read is Dan Kennedy's monthly newsletter. In fact, I literally just got mine today in the mail this month, and so I will be unplugging today,

sitting in a chair next to my, who am I kidding? I don't have my fireplace on, it's not cold enough for that. But if I had a fireplace and it was cold, I'd be doing that, but I literally will sit down today with a chair and I will read the entire thing. And every single month, it's just something different. cold enough for that, but if I had a fireplace and it was cold, I'd be doing that, but I literally will sit down today with a chair and I will read the entire thing. So, and every single month's just something different. So if you're not a subscriber yet, go to NoBSLetter.com.

Go subscribe, you get a free trial and a whole bunch of free Dan Kennedy goodies and bonuses from him and from me just for trying it out. And so go to NoBSLetter.com if you wanna like go deep with Dan Kennedy. But other than that, we're gonna jump into day number, or part number three of my day with Dan, and I hope you guys enjoy this episode.

Your other question was, you know, about implementation. And so your first thing, your big idea, your radical thing, right? You have to be able to put that across in a very big way. And if you look all through history, it's like we take, most people now don't even remember but we sort of take the Atkins products, weight loss products for granted, they're just there. It's denying people like Rob Lowe who's never had a weight problem in his entire free life, right, is doing the commercials. Nobody really remembered there's Dr. Actitts, but that whole thing started. Dr. Actitts started the anti-carb, you know, the food pyramid is wrong, the government

food pyramid is crap, and anti-carcarb and you can eat all the steak you want, steak three times a day if you want to. And the original Atkins diet was a radical big idea attacked by pretty much the entire medical establishment which made it, made it. And that happens a lot, right? You can't have a small villain Whatever you pitch yourself against has to be big and important You know Superman they lasted about three months when they

Created Superman with him lifted cars above his head Getting Lois Lane. She fell off a cliff, but now what? Right? And so, hence the creation of the super villain because you really don't need a superhero if you don't have super villains, right? And that's the same for all of us who want to take this position. And the second thing about it is you need to find a way to be theatrical with it. It needs to make itself visible. So in whatever market it is that you are cracking this way, you've got to get into all the media, you've got to maybe be in the physical locations, you have maybe got to get people

in a room and you've got to be able to do something really dramatic in the way that you present this. Do you remember Sight Engine? I don't know if you remember a big mic that was in a, he was my mastermind with Glaze with Bill back in the day. He sold hydroponics and stuff. Yeah I do remember him. And he got kicked out of the trade show.

They wouldn't let him come. So the night before the trade show, he threw the biggest industry party outside and everybody came and then he gave everybody these t-shirts of this big bull drinking his product and then peeing out the competitor's product. And he gave them all t-shirts and he said, we're gonna have runners around handing out

thousand dollar bills to people who are wearing this during the event. So the next three days, every attendee of the event He gave them all t-shirts and he said, we're going to have runners around handing out thousand dollar bills to people who are wearing this during the event. So the next three days, every attendee of the event had that t-shirt running around and just took over the entire industry and they all hated him. But he ended up just taking the whole thing. Yeah. Look, you only get to do that stunt once. So you want to get it right when you do it because you only get

to do that stunt once. But see where they have, where that association has gathered all these people, right, they're there because it's the only association there is for them, so they're there. They're being told what they're being told. Some number of them are hearing about hydroponics. Some number of them are questioning quietly, privately what they're being told. And when that erupts, everything changes. Just the big number changes things. Because the same dynamic that made people go along with A, makes them go along with B.

Right? in and of themselves persuade some people because there's exit interviews, they know it, people go—it's like people used to listen to Limbaugh, they go predetermined to hate it. But first of all then they see all these people. Well, how can all these people be crazy? Right? We understand. MSNBC told us that these people were all lunatics. But geez, there's a lot of lunatics here. You know? And then they start to talk to him. And some of them are rationalists, right? And some of them, they're like, he's a doctor, he's a lawyer, Martha, how can this be?

And then they actually listen. Now, if there was only 50 people there, that dynamic doesn't happen. If that guy only got 20 or 30 people running around wearing the shirts, it's over. Right? He gets nowhere. So you need to stunt big. The stealing the audience in front of the meeting, the association meeting, for myself and for clients, I've done that a lot.

And again, you only get away with it once. They ban you from the hotel, so the hotel won't take you. And they threaten with your membership. But so they had their convention of Phoenix the year I hijacked, because we didn't work with Phoenix at the time. And so, I had the event re-promoted and I had three airport shuttle buses I rented that had signage on them for NSA attendees, free transportation. So the buses picked people up at the airport and brought them to the seminar. And I had a big billboard at the airport, you know, Dan Kennedy and NSA welcome you to Phoenix. And yeah, there were a lot of people kind of mad, you know. And I mean, it was like, well, can you show me in the bylaws

where it says somebody can't rent a billboard to welcome people to their city? I don't understand, you know, which makes them madder because I don't understand, you know, which makes them madder because—but they're almost asking for it in many of these markets, you know, because they are enforcing, in many as dumb or self-serving things from the top down. And so there's these restless natives that are a great, great opportunity. All right, 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. Every time you connect to the internet, you're exposed. Your data, your passwords, your browsing habits, and even your business strategies could be at risk. That's why I use NordVPN, the ultimate secret weapon for online security.

One click and boom, all my internet traffic is encrypted. No hackers, no snooping ISPs, no data leaks, and it's fast. NordVPN is one of the fastest VPNs in the world, so there's no buffering, no lag, just seamless browsing whether I'm working, streaming, or traveling. 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. Final 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 4 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, funnel hackers, let me paint you a picture. You're running a business, your funnel's finally converting like crazy and suddenly it hits you. You need to hire someone like yesterday. Maybe it's a copywriter to help you crank out more sales pages or a designer to refresh

your landing pages or someone to do customer support to help you to handle your growing audience. The problem is you're swamped and you don't have weeks to shift through resumes. So what do you do? You turn to Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all that you need. They make it fast, simple and super effective. Stop struggling to get your job seen on those other job sites that bury your listing.

With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your posts jump straight to the top of the page so that the right candidates see it first. It's just like pulling your job ad on a billboard for the exact person you need to hire. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more application than non-sponsored jobs.

Now here's the best part. With Indeed, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And let me tell you how fast this platform is. Literally in the time that we've been talking right now, 23 people have been hired on Indeed worldwide. Imagine finding your dream hire while your competitors are still waiting through job boards and job boards that don't deliver. So here's what you need to do right now. Go to indeed.com slash clicks right now and get a $75 sponsored job credit board

to boost your post visibility. That's indeed.com slash clicks. Support the show, save time and find your next hire faster. Remember when it comes to hiring, indeed, it's all that you need. I don't know if you've ever read the Salesforce book, how they launched Salesforce behind the clouds. That's what Benioff did too. He went to the big Oracle conferences and he paid off all the cab drivers and they had the death of software signs everywhere as people were coming in and that's how they leveraged and that's how Salesforce got for a while welcomed into the club. Maybe

never. So you have to be very results oriented. But you want the opposition because you want the visible vocal opposition because that's the most effective way to attract attention to yourself is to be opposed. Visibly and vocally. I always said about 2016, if Trump had run unopposed, he probably would have lost. Well, him getting elected the first time was ridiculous. I mean, it was just ridiculous. He's got like four people on his campaign staff. They hardly spend any money. He's never run for anything.

It's just ludicrous. They're running against the Bush dynasty. It's sort of like Sunday's game. You can't even imagine how the Chiefs could play the way they played. You can imagine them losing, but like that? And you're looking at June 16th. I said if he'd run unopposed, he probably wouldn't have gotten elected, right? The opposition made it possible.

Hillary made it possible. Hillary made it possible. If they had had a halfway decent candidate that wasn't instantly disliked by 80% of the people who met them, there's no way you would have won that election. Now this time around was different, but opposition is the quickest way to attract attention to yourself. There's a historic thing that's interesting to find and see. It predates many of you. But it was a big phenomenon in that was later outlawed as a pyramid scheme. The laws actually didn't exist.

They were written and applied retroactively to put it out of business. It got my name a Glenn Turner, but two main companies were a cosmetic company, Coscott, and a motivational company, Dare to Be Great. And this predates the internet. So there's no cheap media except manual labor existent in the world. And Glenn's an interesting person in himself because he drove this with spoken word with his own presentations. And grew up poor, so as a kid he had a real bad hair lip and three botched operations.

So he used to be able to do it really well. So when he speaks, and he does the three hour seminar like that. It takes you 10, 15 minutes to be able to get it. In 36 months, they put 620, 630,000 people in at five thousand dollars a piece and the entire multi-level industry immediately hated him because he had figured out front-end loading okay so all the other companies you buy your thirty dollar kit you start to a business You buy your $30 kit, you start doing business, you only make money when somebody does something. Well, in the Turner system, you made money on the $5,000. Now he actually got it from an earlier, from William Patrick, who you know has a Napoleon Hill connection in the holiday magic, but that's neither here nor there.

So it was sort of like what we did with prepay and chiropractic. All of a sudden you could recruit four people and make $12,000 and in the regular MLM system you recruit four people and you made 20 bucks. So the difference was profound, which they hated of course, you know. And so he discovered inventory loading. You want to be in the business, you should have inventory and you should buy $5,000 worth of inventory to start because any other business you got to have inventory. Why wouldn't you have it in this part?" And it changed all dynamic. He was so controversial and attacked media, the MLM industry, and legally they eventually

won but in the interim. And so I'm sure you could find it on YouTube. There's an old, they made their own fake documentary. They were way ahead of their time because it's really good. The production values are spectacular, but it's really good. And it's called Turner, Turner, Turner. I bet you can find it on YouTube probably. And it's well worth watching because he took all the attacks, brought more attention to him. how much Amway and Shackley and Mary Kay attacking me, how many people it put in.

Because some of their people who were questioning, you know, I'm doing all these meetings and I'm not getting anywhere and I'm not like, we came to town and did a meeting they came to see the demo They came to see What this horrible? person and this horrible thing was all about and Three hours later they were signed up right the opposition drove

God knows a third of his attendance, maybe I saw it the first time that way, you know Everybody in my upline was telling everybody every three minutes, you know Don't look at this, you know, this guy's horrible and he's, you know, and then they're holding a big meeting at a hotel and I go look, right? I ain't enjoying but I sat there and I said, I don't see what's wrong with this business model, you know? Yeah, if I opened a store, I'd have to have inventory. What's wrong with this?

Right? So the Turner Turner Turner movie is really taking all the criticism and all the opposition and selling with it. Right? So when he published a book, the book about him, which I'll bet you get it at Amazon, that they published and made it look like a real book. Hired an old broken down Orlando Sentinel reporter who had won a Pulitzer Prize at one time to write the book.

It's called Convander Saint. So he, you know, leaned into this in every way that he could. And in any place I've played the game, there's no better way to get attention than the opposition screaming about you all the time because there's curiosity. Early in my time in NSA, pretty famous speaker, come on name him, people would know him and he's not dead yet Well, you know those of my era If you if you live a lot of life you outlive all your enemies all your peers and most of your friends.

But he called and got to me at the office very early, three or four months after I had made the big splash and started to make noise. I'll deny it if you ever talk about it, but I'm famous and I'm not making any money. I'm just barely one step ahead of all the costs and I can't figure it out. And I want to come and see you, but you have to promise not to tell anybody that I paid to come talk to you ever. To this day. I said, you know, okay. I said I should charge a double, but you know, okay. I get it, right?

It's like he's arriving with the raincoat over his head, you know, coming in the back door. But that's how high the opposition was in his immediate peer group. I had him as client for two or three years. never testimonial, never, you know, it was a big secret, which I found funny. But the opposition is, you know, is helpful if you respond to it properly. LinkedIn ads let you target who you want, CEOs, C-suite executives and 130 million professionals ready to take action. These aren't random clicks. These are people who are already in the mindset to do business. With LinkedIn's advanced targeting, you are not just throwing spaghetti at the wall.

You're placing the right message in front of the right person at the perfect time. Here's what blew me away. LinkedIn ads delivers up to five times the row ads of other platforms. And that's not just the stat. That's scaling power. Imagine your campaigns turning into a steady stream of qualified leads all while your competitors are busy playing on platforms that barely move the needle. If you're serious about scaling your business, you can't afford to ignore this.

Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. And here's the cherry on top. LinkedIn is giving you $100 credit for your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash clicks to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. What's up everybody?

This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend, Taylor Wells. Taylor spoke at our last Funnel Hacking Live because I wanted him to share a really cool concept about what he calls the revolving pricing method. And today he decided to sponsor a podcast to give you guys more access to this super cool strategy that you are going to love. It's something we've been implementing into our high end coaching program as well and it is amazing. But to kind of give you some context about this offer he's making for you guys, as you

may or may not know, a few years ago, JP Morgan Chase did a study and guess what they found? They found that the average small business only has about 28 days of operating expenses in reserve. That's right, less than a month of cash on hands. Now, if you're like me, the idea of your business being one bad month away from disaster is enough to make your stomach drop. Am I right? Especially with how the economy has been lately.

It's not the time to be gambling with your finances. So Taylor put together this book called The Revolving Pricing Method and it's awesome. It helps you turn every client you close into a long-term profit machine. We're not talking about long-term profit machine. We're not talking about one-time paydays, we're talking about creating sustainable and real predictable income for the long haul. Now here's where it gets even better.

Taylor put together an awesome exclusive deal just for you guys, my Marketing Secrets listeners, and if you go over to wealthyconsultants.com slash secrets, you can grab the Revolving Price Method book and over $150 worth of bonuses and get this all. It's at 70% off and I promise you guys as a customer of this, you are going to love it. So if you're serious about growing your business with real stability, this is the model you

need to add into your funnels. 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. In finance, you know, Fisher Investments, which is the biggest direct response advertiser in financial services and they run more TV than anybody. We had candidate info summit.

I don't remember when, but their most successful campaigns were early and his position was, it still is, I think it's, I don't know, it's too rigid, but his position is against annuities. And the most successful campaign was looking at the camera and saying, we don't sell annuities, we would never sell annuities. I'll burn in hell before we ever sell an annuity. And you shouldn't own them, and if you do own them, we should get you out of them and you need our free guide of what's this year. And he said that the big annuity companies all filed ethics objections against him in the association.

They went to the TV stations and screamed bloody murder. We don't want you running these ads. And they ran a campaign. The ad, the big Wall Street firms told these stations not to run, right? I had an ad refused. I kind of did this in the Infomercial Association too. And I had an ad refused by then NEMA, the National Informational Marketing Association, which doesn't exist anymore, in their big convention program because it said what you're being told is, you know, NEMA refused to run and didn't want you to

see. The housekeeping room in the hotel found the room where all the housekeepers hang their uniforms and have their lockers. And we gave each one of them three hours to leave these in all the rooms. And pretty much everybody there was – I mean we probably reached a few people that weren't there for the convention but pretty much everybody was there for the convention. And I mean the screaming went on for a year, you know, afterwards. But again I said well, I don't see the bylaws. Anything that says, I can't put this thing in rooms.

You should have thought of that when you wrote up the bylaws. So they actually foolishly turned this into an open feud. But from their standpoint, the correct thing would have been to ignore it. They got up on stage and talked about how this thing was wrong and they had refused the ad. And all that did was bring people to me. That's all dead, right? Because the curiosity, especially of the restless natives, goes through the roof, right? G, maybe there's something

there. Maybe this guy's on to something, right? Because he's so opposed and they're so afraid of him. And so that's the way you play this game. With digital marketing nowadays, would you do similar? Like, people are talking about these running ads showing the stuff and... Sure, you got pros and cons to that, right? where your opposition has an easier time of making a lot of noise because there's theoretically, there's almost no barrier, you know, to entry. So they can set up for a while. It went away.

There was a... God, what was it? It was Dan Kennedy is a thief. DanKennedyisatheif.com. Really. There's a website. It was up for about a year. And it was three or four ex-members and a guy I threw out of a seminar. And I do mean throughout. And not asked to leave, I mean throughout. And they like made a project out of this and spent a lot of time on it I guess guess and chat, you know, all that. Well, obviously you couldn't do that pre-internet because probably no media would take that ad and they'd have to spend money and, you know, so that's maybe the bad side of it.

But the good side of it is you have access to all that media too, right? And so once again, when there's a lot of opposition to you, and there are restless natives and you are findable. So now the online thing, they got to be able to find you when their curiosity is aroused any place they might go. So you got to have an Amazon presence, you got gotta have a YouTube presence, you gotta have a TikTok presence. If you're gonna play this game, you gotta be everywhere. Trump's kid and one partner ran this part of the campaign for Trump this time, and they really knew what the hell they

were doing. And they were everywhere. And so he nearly carried 18 to 34. I think anything Democrats held onto it by four points, which is unheard of for a Republican, although he's not really a Republican, but everywhere. That's why he's now got this It helped get him elected. And he's very reluctant to turn it off for obvious reasons. But he was everywhere. lot of bad stuff. And they decide, yeah, I'm going to take a look. And whatever their impulse is, you want to be there to accommodate it. So if their impulse is to go to Amazon, I'll see if this guy's got a book and maybe I'll buy a book.

So it's why you will never see probably another intellectual property infomercial, a Tony Robbins type show because the bleed off to everything else is too great. The owner of the show can't control the business. Build a phone buying it. Yeah, well, they're going to go look. If you're selling a $399 box, they're going to go look to see what's on Amazon for $12. They're going to go see what's on YouTube for free. So the bleed's too great.

But this is what you can capitalize on when there's a lot of noise about you. And it almost doesn't matter whether the noise is good or bad. what you can capitalize on when there's a lot of noise about you. And it almost doesn't matter whether the noise is good or bad. And in some cases, it's okay if the noise is bad because that stirs up the curiosity of the restless native. And when the restless native finds a truth teller and a man on a white horse, he is again a much more rabid customer than is an ordinary customer. That means all sorts of things.

It has to do with conversion percentages, ascension, amount of money spent, amount of money spent in a certain period of time. Their lust and their action levels are much higher than just an ordinary customer being brought through a system, right? Because a lot of their pent-up frustration is suddenly going away. It has a remedy which it did not have before and that remedy is you. Now obviously if you want to sell stuff online you're gonna need a good funnel but if you want a great funnel then you're gonna need to use ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first time entrepreneurs to leave their nine to five and to launch their dream than any other company on earth. ClickFunnels was built for the dreamer and the doer, and you can get a free four-today trial by going to ClickFunnels.com slash podcast right now. That's ClickFunnels.com slash podcast.

ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world.