The Trick that Made Dave Dee $330,000 in 75 Minutes

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details, And now it’s time to claim your List Building

[0:52] Igor Kheifets:
Welcome back to The ListBuilding Lifestyle, I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting none other than Dave Dee. Now, if you’ve never heard a name, you might have actually heard, like audio heard Dave, if you listen to any of the monthly GKIC calls, if you’re a den Kennedy fan, like me.

So, I was, I didn’t know who Dave Dee was, until I started noticing that there’s this guy who keeps on, like appearing in that universe. And I looked him up, and basically Dave Dee is someone who went from hypnotizing entire rooms because he’s a hypnotist, to hypnotizing people into buying info products.

Because he, at one point, became the highest selling, or the top selling GKIC, I guess persona, poster boy, poster child, I guess we can kind of give you that title. And then eventually, at some point as well, Dave became the chief hunch over there, kind of calling the shots, and helping with the transition after the company got sold.

So basically, we’re talking to somebody who is not only coming from that sort of Dan Kennedy universe, but also lived through a bunch of evolutions that that universe went through.

So I’m really excited to chat with Dave, because I’m a huge Dan Kennedy fan, and it feels like I’m one handshake away from the man himself. So, Dave, welcome to The ListBuilding Lifestyle.

[02:31] Dave Dee:
Thank you. Oh, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. (Awesome. So) Just gotta give you one correction, I was not a hypnotist, I was a mentalist, so mind reader, not a hypnotist. So I did one hypnosis show in college, and decided not for me, but yes, I was a mind reader.

[02:49] Igor Kheifets:
Okay, so a hypnotist hypnotizes people, a mentalist reads minds,

[02:55] Dave Dee:
Reads minds, plants thoughts in people’s heads, that kind of stuff.

[02:58] Igor Kheifets:
So like, if I think of a card you can tell me what I’m thinking, is that?

[03:05] Dave Dee:
Not over the internet, because I’ve got to be able to be with you. But yeah, that kind of stuff, yeah, exactly.

And what’s interesting is, and you mentioned my stage presentations to sell, I do incorporate the stuff that’s the real piece of this, because there’s a lot of NLP and hypnotic language patterns and things like that are actually involved in doing that type of show. So I do incorporate some of that. And, yeah.

And so, it was interesting,that’s how I got, actually got into the Dan Kennedy universe. I bought, as a struggling entertainer, his core product at the time, which was called “Magnetic Marketing”. And I applied that to my entertainment business. And it obviously had nothing to do with entertainers. But marketing is marketing.

And I went from doing three shows a month to averaging 25 shows a month in 90 days. In my fourth month, I did 57 shows. So everything changed for me, and because of that, I think he used poster boy, so I became a really great testimonial for Dan. Because everyone assumed that, “hey, if it worked for a magician or a mentalist, it would work”.

And it’s true, because my business was no different than any other person who was selling a service, right? I had to generate leads, I had to close sales over the phone, I had to deliver my service, I had to get referrals, it’s the same thing, right? It was no different.

That’s one of the things that it was, the tenants of the Kennedy world, which is your business is not different. Your business is fundamentally the same as every other business, and mine was.

[04:54]
And so, what’s interesting, Igor is that Dan invited me to speak in one of his stages, in one of his big stages for an annual event. And I was really confident, and I was really cocky, because I was on stage all the time.

But he said, “You got to sell something, you got to sell a product at the end”. Because of the way that this kind of event works, the host of the event gets 50% of whatever the people on stage are selling, okay? So that’s how that works, in most cases, unless you’re a celebrity speaker.

And so, I was still confident, so I put together this little info product. It was one of my first info products. And I went up, there was all cocky dude. I was like, “Oh man, I’m just gonna crush this”. And I seemed like I was, I had the audience laughing, and they were clapping, and they were liking me.

And I was like, “God, this is so easy. I’m thinking, “I’m gonna make $100,000”, because they’re gonna make sick”. I’ve seen other speakers do it. People are running to the back of the room to buy their stuff,

And so, I do my clothes, if you could call it a close, and almost nothing happened. The only people who were going to the back of the room were people who were leaving to go to the bathroom. I mean, it was brutal, it was brutal!

And so, I had to make a decision at that point, was I going to just continue with my entertainment career, which I loved, or was I going to learn how to get up there and speak to sell and make a greater impact and, quite frankly, make even more money?

[06:35]
And so, for about a couple of years, I dove head first into it. I spent a ton of money -let me check that- I invested a ton of money to learn this. I bought courses, took trainings, and went to get my own system together.

Two years later, Dan invited me back to speak. Now this time, I wasn’t on the main stage, because when you bomb on the main stage, they don’t really put you back on the main stage.

But this time, I was armed with my system for selling, and I had been working on for a couple years, and I did my presentation, it was in a breakout session, first thing in the morning in a room, I had maybe 100 people in the room, maybe 120

But when the smoke cleared, I sold $330,000 worth of the product in 75 minutes. And even though I was in a breakout session, I ended up being the number one salesperson for the entire event.

So now, by the way, I didn’t get to keep all $330,000 but I did get to keep half of it. So it’s like, “hey, this is a pretty good gig. I don’t know what other people’s hourly rates are, but that’s a pretty good hourly rate, right? I spoke for 75 minutes, came home with six figures,

[08:01]
And then, the company was actually sold, so just a little background for everybody. So Dan Kennedy sold the company to a gentleman by the name of Bill Glazer. Bill Glazer actually built the company up much greater than Dan, because Bill had different goals. Bill had employees, Dan didn’t want any of that.

Bill, in turn, sold the company to a private equity firm, and that private equity firm was actually at that event. I had lunch with the CEO of GKIC, the company that they just purchased from Bill Glazer, and because she wanted to have lunch with me, “who is this guy that just did $330,000 in sales?”

Dan had actually spoken to her about me and said, “you guys” -because Bill was leaving- Dan wasn’t actively involved in the day to day. And he said, “You better get somebody in here, who knows what the hell they’re doing, as far as marketing goes, because you guys don’t, here’s a guy I recommend”.

And so, during lunch, the CEO asked me what I wanted to come on board. And I really didn’t want to, for the most part, do it, so I made this crazy offer, right? “I’m not moving to Chicago. I’m staying in Atlanta. That’s where I lived at the time. I want this amount of money, here’s what I want to do, blah, blah”.

And like, there’s no way they’re going to take it. And they did take it. And so, I became the Chief Marketing Officer for GKIC during that transitional period. And then, there were multiple transitional periods.

[09:53]
And eventually we moved further and further away from the philosophy that I actually believed in and into the techniques and the strategies that I believed in. And so, I quit. I had to go. It was no longer a tenable situation.

Because I had never worked for a corporation ever, to show you just how (big and dumb), let’s use the word “dumb”, we’re gonna use the word “dumb” here. This is a 100% true story. I’m just gonna, I don’t think I’ve ever told this story on a podcast, ever.

[10:29] Igor Kheifets:
Don’t worry about it. Nobody listens to this podcast anyway.

[10:33] Dave Dee:
Yeah, right, yeah, okay. So this is no joke, this is no joke. So I’m meeting with the CEO. I just got hired as a chief marketing officer -This is an embarrassing story- A chief marketing officer of the company, okay? And Betty says, “So you’re a C level executive”. Betty was the CEO.

And I say to her, “I don’t want to be a C level executive, I want to be an A level executive”, right? And I think, I didn’t know what it’s like, C level, man, that’s as high as you should go. And so, I think she was thinking, “What the hell did we just hire here?” Yeah, so I just did not fit in the corporate mold.

[11:30] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, it’s weird to go from an entrepreneur to an entrepreneur who runs a really big corporate thing, right? It’s just!

[11:30] Dave Dee:
Yeah, it was. It was just very different. I had never been to a board meeting, and the stuff that they were talking about, quite frankly, was not the stuff that they found.

So let me just put it like this, there were more people in the accounting department than there were in the marketing department. (What? Why?) Yeah, yeah! I don’t know, I don’t know. Because, again, I’ve never worked in a corporation.

Now, with that being said, there were some awesome things there. I got to really work very, very closely with Dan. It was really Dan and Dave. We created all of the products. We did all of the launches together. And so, that was a wonderful experience. And I met some incredible people as well.

And quite frankly, it kick-started my career that I have now, right? Which is helping people put together killer presentations, deliver them with passion and power, grow their business and things like that. And so, a lot of people got to know me because I worked with that.

So, you got to know that, so that’s the story. So overall, it was a really great experience, especially working that closely with Dan.

[12:54] Igor Kheifets:
Very interesting, very interesting. I have many questions. Well, first off, so your transition from a mentalist to somebody who sells from stages, did that help you, as far as, like, reading people’s minds for objections?

[13:12] Dave Dee:
Yeah. So, mentalism is -at least the way that I do it- is a theatrical construct, right? But a lot of, as I mentioned, a lot of the techniques are real.

In fact, I just, literally just signed a book deal. We’ll be coming out with a book, actually, in 2027. I didn’t realize how long it took with publishers, but in 2027, incorporating what is called “cold reading into selling processes” (Nice).

So, cold reading is a technique or strategy that allows you to know things about people, or apparently know things about people, get inside their heads, so you can build trust, you can build rapport with them.

So yeah, so I use what makes my system of speaking to sell, whether it’s on stage or whether it’s in person, a little bit different is that I do incorporate some of that into the actual structure of it to make it fun, (which) and to make it fun, and to make it more powerful, right?

So let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. You mentioned. Objection, (yeah) so, I want to give tremendous value here. I mean, we can go whatever direction you want to go.

[14:33] Igor Kheifets:
No, I would love an example. I was just about.

[14:37] Dave Dee:
Yeah, give some tremendous value. So, answering objections! So, we know that in a webinar presentation or a stage presentation that you need to incorporate the answers to any objection that somebody has in your presentation, right?

Because it’s not a one on one situation, (You should predict where and) right, you got it exactly right, so one of the things that you do when you’re designing a presentation is you could create an objection list, okay?

So, you create a list of all of the objections the audience could have, about why they would not go ahead. And then during the presentation, there’s different ways to incorporate the answers to those objections. Well, one of my favorite ways to do it is subliminally, okay?

So, I knew I only sell high ticket stuff, okay? That’s all I’ve ever sold is high ticket stuff. So, I know that no matter how good my presentation is, there’s going to be somebody, or many people in the audience who are going to say, “I want that, but it’s too expensive”, or “I can’t afford it”. So, I know that’s going to be the objection: “I can’t afford it”, “I want it, but I can’t afford it”.

So, I could answer that objection head on, but I don’t, What I do is I embed it inside of a story, and I’ll tell you, I’m just going to tell you briefly the story, because you kind of already know, already know part of it, so I’ll just do it like I was on stage, all right?

[16:06]
So, I was doing three shows a month, I was really struggling. I went to this event, and I saw this guy by the name of Dan Kennedy speak. I never heard of Dan Kennedy before, and he was the last speaker on the program.

Everyone was getting up to leave because the celebrity speaker had just left the stage, but I sat down and I started taking notes, and I said, “This is it! This is the thing that’s missing, It’s marketing, I need to learn marketing”.

And then, I was so dumb! I didn’t even know Dan was trying to sell a product. I thought he was actually trying to teach me something. So then, he tells me the price and tells the audience the price of the product, and my heart sank, because I knew that this was the thing that I needed. I knew that this was the thing that I needed, but I didn’t think I could afford it.

Then I remembered something Jim Rohn said. Jim Rohn was Tony Robbins’ mentor. Jim Rohn once said: “successful people invest in their education”. And so, I knew that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to do what successful people did. So I went ahead and I invested in that product, even though I didn’t think I had the money to do it. And then I tell the rest of my story.

[17:16]
So, this is at the very beginning of the presentation. So what did I just do? I just planted a seed in everybody’s mind, in the audience, so that when I get to my clothes and I’m telling the price, I know some people are going to think “I want it, but I can’t afford it”. So what happens is that seed that I planted an hour earlier sprouts up in their mind.

Now, for somebody who doesn’t have the objection, that seed that I planted never sprouts, right? They don’t have the objection, so it doesn’t sprout. For that person that does, what they remember is Jim Rohn said, “successful people invest in themselves and their education”. So they remember my story, and they apply it to me, they apply it to themselves.

So what has just happened is now they’re answering their own objection, and I can tell you emphatically and empirically that it works, because every single time I do a presentation, at least one, and usually more, depending on the side of the audience, someone will come up to me and say, “You know, I got the program, it’s really more than I think I can afford. But I remember that thing that Jim Rohn said”.

So, that’s a way more elegant solution than saying, “oh, now some of you might be thinking, I can’t afford this, but let me tell you something that Jim Rohn once said”, See? There’s a difference, embedding it inside of a story, plants it in their head, And so, they’re answering their own objection.

[19:05] Igor Kheifets:
Doesn’t feel direct. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to penetrate.

[19:11] Dave Dee:
It doesn’t feel direct, right. And so, another thing that I did is -and I don’t know if you caught it, or if your audience, who are watching this, no, listening, caught it- is when I was talking about, “I knew I needed this”, I kept pointing to myself: “I knew this was the thing that was going to change”. So I’m pointing to myself, which tells the audience, this is the thing you need.

[19:38] Igor Kheifets:
You need Dave, apparently!

[19:41] Dave Dee:
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, right? But I’m saying it in a way that bypasses conscious thought. And so, that’s an example, right? So that’s an example of incorporating this psychological stuff into. And that’s what elevates a presentation.

Now, the truth is, you gotta be delivering something of value. I mean, you’ve got to present, these are little things that enhance the overall presentation. Alone, just by doing that is not going to dramatically, right? But all combined together with a nice structure and a powerful delivery of the presentation.

So, I’m getting again excited, because here’s the thing, here’s the big problem with the way that people are learning to create webinars, and, specifically webinars, because that’s what most people are doing, right?

Everyone is looking for the perfect structure, the perfect webinar system, the perfect slide order, the perfect all of that. . . let me tell you something, here’s the truth about this: There are two pieces to a successful presentation, a presentation that converts, whether you’re selling something or whether you’re getting someone to schedule an appointment with you after your presentation.

There’s two pieces: One is the content, right? And that’s what everyone is focused on, the content and the structure of the presentation. “If I could just find the perfect webinar formula, I’m going to be good”.

No, because everyone misses the second piece. And the second piece is how you deliver the presentation. In fact, how you deliver the presentation is more important than the content of the presentation and the structure of the presentation.

If you deliver your presentation with great stage craft, and you deliver your presentation with passion and power, that will elevate your sales far more than: “Oh, I’ve gotta have this right slide here, and I gotta do the stacking of the bonuses and all of that stuff that everyone is being taught”. That’s the mechanical piece of it. But the real power comes from the presentation of it.

[22:20]
So, a true story. We used to do these boot camps at GKIC. So, GKIC, was a company that Kennedy founded. Glazer bought, a private equity company bought from Bill, okay?

And so, I would do all of the boot camps. These were two day events where we would basically indoctrinate new members into the ways of GKIC. And so, I was the one that did all of those events. I did all of the speaking and things like that.

And so, one of the things that we wanted to make sure that everybody owned was “Magnetic Marketing”, because that was the foundational core product at the time. And so, I created a presentation, kind of a neat story, just to back up.

So, before I started working for GKIC, Dan Kennedy went out speaking. That’s how he generated business, he went on stages. But he was getting tired of that, so he didn’t want to do it, so they asked me to put together a webinar to sell “Magnetic Marketing”, which was really cool for me.

Because you think about it, a decade earlier, I was a guy sitting in the audience watching him, and now I’m being asked to create the presentation. And so, I created a webinar with my voice, not Dan’s, and we put that on autopilot, which did 1.5 million in sales in a year, so pretty cool.

So anyway, so now I’m doing this, the same presentation that I created as a webinar, live, and in front of this boot camp audience, okay? And then we did a lot of these, and one day I just didn’t feel like doing it. I just didn’t feel like doing the whole presentation.

And so, I decided, I just said to the audience, “hey, listen, at this point, I am supposed to be doing a full presentation to sell you “Magnetic Marking”, if you don’t have it already, but I’m not going to do that”.

And I put down the clicker, I put down the remote control, and I said, I just picked up the product, and I just went on a riff of passion, telling everybody why they needed this product, and that if they did not have this product, they weren’t serious about their success.

Now, keep in mind that they did know my story, okay? They had heard my story earlier in the morning. But I didn’t do the slides, I didn’t do any of that, and I just with total passion, showed the product. There was no sales presentation, just with passion and belief.

And anyone who was at that company will tell you, this is no joke, we closed nearly 100% of the people who did not have “Magnetic Marketing”. It closed better than the full presentation, with all of the slides and stacking the bonuses and doing all that kind of stuff.

[25:17]
Why? Because of passion and belief. Your audience can feel it, right? Again; I am not saying that you don’t need to have structure, I’m not saying that you don’t need to have good content, I’m not saying any of that. I am saying, though, that that is one piece of the puzzle. The bigger piece of the puzzle is your passion, your delivery, your stage craft, how you get the audience engaged, how you keep them engaged, and your energy that you put out.

So if you, if you were to ask, “is it the mentalism stuff?” No, that’s a piece of it, yes, right? The cold reading stuff and the things I’ve explained. But really, the real thing is what I bring to this is how to present, how to deliver a powerful, persuasive, influential so that the right people buy what you’re selling or schedule an appointment with you.

[26:16] Igor Kheifets:
Mic drop! So, what would you say is, like the worst advice you’ve ever heard when it comes to sales?

[26:21] Dave Dee:
As far as one to one selling or one to many?

[26:24] Igor Kheifets:
Well, you’re clearly an expert in one to many, so let’s stick to that.

[26:27] Dave Dee:
Yeah, yeah. So, the worst advice is, the worst advice that a lot of people follow is: move the free line. Deliver over the top great content, Bs. Because that leads people to deliver too much content.

So, they believe that the more content that they deliver, the more valuable content that they deliver, the higher their conversions will be at the end. And the truth is, the opposite is true, okay?

And here’s why: When you deliver too much content, and my rule is three major pieces of content, that’s it, three, okay? And we can, if you want to, we can quickly go through the entire structure of how I structure a presentation. I mean, we can do it in about 15 minutes, if that’s something your audience would be interested in.

[27:27] Igor Kheifets:
Oh, wow! I wish I could run a poll right now. Let’s just keep talking, and then maybe we’ll get

[27:34] Dave Dee:
Okay, yeah, okay, so, the reason three pieces, right? So people can remember three major things. Once you get beyond three, they can’t remember it. Plus, once you get beyond three, you start over teaching.

And what is the problem with over teaching? Well, the problem with over teaching is, there’s many problems, but one is that you leave your audience, some of your audience, with the false belief that they have enough information to figure it out on their own and get the result that they desire.

And this is only getting worse and worse with AI, right? “Man, he just told me the basic thing, now I can go and just put stuff into chat GPT and figure the rest out on my own, okay? I don’t really need to spend the money with this guy. That’s one possible scenario.

The other scenario, though, is that you deliver so much information that your audience gets confused, that they get overwhelmed. And a confused, overwhelmed audience doesn’t buy either.

[28:48]
So, you want to deliver valuable content. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you don’t. So by the way, whenever I speak at an event -again, this is not, because I don’t do a lot of things, but this is like the thing that I do really well, okay?- I was not only, usually the top salesperson, but one of the top ranked speakers.

So, I was delivering good content. But you want to deliver the content in a particular way, and I’m going to give you two ways that you can deliver content that’s valuable. First, think of it as three big things.

If I could only tell you three things, if I can only tell my audience three things that would help them move along the path to get the result, what would those three major things be? Okay?

And then, now, under those three things, you can teach multiple things, but there’s three main categories, okay? But here’s how you teach, under those three main categories: Number one, you tell people what to do, but not how to do it.

So you tell them what to do, and that is very valuable information. Because most people don’t even know what to do, let alone how to do it. So you tell them what they need to do to get the results, and what if they don’t do it, what the results will be.

So you constantly want to be future pacing, a darkness and a lightness in your presentation, right? If you take this path, this is where it could lead you. If you take this path, this is where it can leave if you do nothing, here’s where it can lead you. So you want to be doing that during your presentation.

[30:39]
The second way to teach is to give them useful but incomplete information, useful but incomplete, let me give you an example: So, I know that, and this is a presentation I’m gonna go way back, way back, my Very first private client who I developed a presentation for. She was an attorney selling to other attorneys, okay?

And one of the things that she did in her office was she had these psychological trigger things set up so people would instantly trust her and like her and all of this kind of stuff. It was very, very cool how she had her office set up.

And so, during her presentation, she would say this, she would say, “Now, I’ve got these seven different psychological triggers that I have very purposely set up in my office to build trust, to build rapport with prospects who come in for a meeting. Now we don’t have time to go over all seven of them, but let me share two of them with you”. Okay?

And so, now she would share two really good things, really good things that people could absolutely take and use. But what did they want to know, Igor? (The other five?) They wanted to know what the other five were. And so, when we got to the close, well, guess what? There happened to be a bonus, which was a DVD of her showing her office and all seven things. So, by giving useful but incomplete, it helps set up the sale at the end,

[32:31]
Which leads to the major point, which is that your entire presentation is a “close”. There’s a closing sequence, but your entire presentation is a close. From the first thing that you say to when you do your call to action, the entire thing is a close.

Every slide, every word, everything is designed to create the desire to invest in the product or service that you’re selling, or to set an appointment with you to go further down the path to solve the problem.

So, one of the worst pieces of advice is, in the way that most people create their presentation, they develop all of the content, they like the teaching piece, right? It’s not really tied into anything with the close, and they’re delivering too much content.

Which overwhelms the audience or leaves them with a false belief that: “I’ve got everything that I need, I can go figure out the restaurant on my own”. It’s you’re actually doing a disservice to your audience when you over teach.

[33:35] Igor Kheifets:
I find that part of it is probably because people are kind of afraid of getting lash back from the audience, like, “Oh, I got on this webinar and all they did is sell me”. So they try to compensate for that.

[33:50] Dave Dee:
Yeah. Well, if all you’re doing is getting on the webinar and trying to sell them, then that’s a problem too, if you’re not delivering any value. But you are delivering value, telling people what to do, not how to do it, or giving useful but incomplete.

Which is what I’ve been doing here. I mean, honestly, for the sake of time, right? So I just said, “Hey, you’ve got to deliver three things. There’s multiple things that you can do”. But I’m not really telling you in great depth.

And even if I did, even if we had time to go through the entire structure of the presentation, what have I already told you? I’ve already told you that that’s only one piece of it, that the biggest piece is presenting with passion, presenting with power, stagecraft. I said, and I’m not, I haven’t taught you anything about how to do that, right?

So, I’m not selling anything here, right? I mean, we obviously have to truncate this for the sake of time, but I’ve already set up, right? “Hey, I could teach you exactly how to put the presentation, but you’re still missing the biggest piece, which is how to deliver that presentation”, you see?

So, I’ve been doing it for years, I just do it naturally, but I don’t think anyone watching this is going to say, “Oh, wow, he didn’t deliver any value” If they do say that, they haven’t been listening very carefully, because there’s been a ton of value, right?

[35:23]

So, you’ve got to balance it, but yeah, if you just overcompensate, because, first of all, that leads to that selling is a bad thing. It’s not. Selling is about helping people solve their problems and get outcomes that they want. That’s what selling is.

Now, if you’re selling some scammy thing that doesn’t really work, and, we all know there’s a bazillion people out there in internet land that do that, that’s a different scenario. But if you’re selling a legitimate product or a legitimate service that helps somebody, then, Jay Abraham, I’m paraphrasing him, Jay Abraham said, “then you have a moral obligation to do everything you can in ethical bounds to close that sale”. And, I truly believe that.

[36:14]
Let me take this just a little bit further, because this is such an important point, because some people, a lot of people think that sales is a bad thing.

So here’s the extended story from my going to this, seeing Kennedy. So, Dan did his sales presentation, gave us the price of the product, and I walked out of that event. I did not buy it at the event. I didn’t buy it at the event, and as I was driving home in my beat up car, I knew I’d made a huge error.

Now this is way before the internet there. And so, there was no Amazon, there was no way to contact Dan.

[37:00] Igor Kheifets:
There is still no way to contact him, right?

[37:03] Dave Dee:
Yeah, there is still, well, fax, yeah, I just, I’ve been faxing with him. By the way, it’s not a joke. (No, no, I know. I know, yeah). Just everybody knows, in case they think we’re kidding, but it’s, so there was no way to get in contact, there was no website. And I knew I had made such a huge error.

Well, a week later, I got a letter in the mail from Dan Kennedy. The letter says, “Hey, you were at the success event, you didn’t buy the product. If you order by the deadline, stamped in red on the order form, you can get the product at the same price I offered it for at the event”. And then there was a full sales letter in there. And that’s the thing that sold me (Well, that’s how they got you with some follow up). That’s how they got me, right.

[38:03]
So, let’s just break that down, because there’s a bazillion lessons in what I just told you. The first thing is, had Dan not believed in this product enough to follow up because he was afraid of selling, or he thought selling was bad, where would I be? I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, okay? Because that was a catalyst that changed my life.

Secondly, just because you deliver a great presentation doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to buy, that’s why follow up is mission critical. Most people think I just did my best thing,

I just delivered my best, and they didn’t buy it, therefore they don’t want it. No, it just wasn’t right for them at that time, so there’s another lesson there.

The third lesson is deadlines, right? Have a reason why someone should invest in your product, set an appointment with you now. Just make sure that they’re real, okay? Make sure that they’re real, that the scarcity is real and not some BS, internet marketing crap, stuff that a lot of people use, right?

“Oh, this goes away”, and then you go back to the order form, and the countdown clock has started again, you know what I’m talking about? All that kind of stuff. You know, you can create real scarcity.

So, just inside that little story, there’s a ton of lessons, but the biggest one was, believe in your stuff, man! If you get people’s results and you’re truly helping people solve a problem, get an outcome, improve their life, learn how to sell and enjoy it, and don’t be embarrassed by it.

Because you’re literally helping people. That’s what you’re doing. The more people you help, the more money you’ll make. That’s how it works, okay? And the longer sustained success you’ll have. So I’ll get off my soapbox, but!

[40:09] Igor Kheifets:
Do you have, like, a weird thing you do before going on stage?

[40:15] Dave Dee:
Oh, what a great question! Man, nobody’s ever asked me that question. What a great question! Yes, I do, I love that question, Igor. Yeah, I’ll teach it to everybody, okay? So, one of the things you want to do is you want to get yourself into a peak emotional state before you walk out on stage.

So if you see the masters, like Tony Robbins, their energy is just exploding. Now, that doesn’t mean that you should come out and present like Tony, right? I don’t, okay? I don’t present like Dan. I present like Dave, right? You want to be an amplified version of yourself.

But, you obviously want to walk out onto that stage or webinar stage, with confidence and passion and power, right? And not be all nervous, okay? Which a lot of people are. A lot of people get really nervous before going out in front of an audience.

I do, but here’s how you can harness that and create a little ritual that will, just you’ll be totally confident, totally passionate, energy just pouring out of you. And so, it’s a technique that comes from neuro linguistic programming, which is called “anchoring”.

So, anchoring is this: Think of a time now you’re super young, so you look like you just got out of high school, but for the older folks that are on here, think about it like you think about a song from high school that you hear, and it instantly transports you back to that time, right? The same emotions, the same bad haircut, right? So, what happened is that the song triggers the emotion. So the emotion is triggered by the song, okay?

Well, what we can do is we can actually create these anchors for confidence, for power, for calm. You can create an anchor for anything. And then, what you need to do is if you do enough repetition of it, where you’re tying in the trigger, a unique sound, a unique gesture, a unique word, to the emotion, then what happens? Eventually those two become linked, and all you need to do is fire off the trigger.

So, the one that I created, geez, I don’t know, 15 years ago, 15 plus years ago? Is the following: I rub my hands together, backstage, just like this. I don’t do this in front of everybody. And I say to myself, “I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best, yes!” And I clap my hands really loud.

And I only need to do it once, because, man, I can already feel it. Because I’ve been doing this for so long, I can already feel it. I didn’t even really do it, but I can kind of feel it. I don’t know if you can feel it, but.

[43:10] Igor Kheifets:
I can tell you’re feeling it.

[43:14] Dave Dee:
Yeah, it’s crazy, right? It’s just crazy. Now, you don’t have to use that. You can make a fist, you can, whatever it is for you. But here’s the thing, here are the rules to setting this anchor. I’ve got another client who I taught this to, and his anchor is he screams before he goes out: “be a man!” That’s what he screams, that’s his anchor.

So, it is not the rubbing of the hands, it’s not the making of the fist, it’s not the clapping of the hands, that’s not what it is. That’s the trigger. So, to set your anchor, here’s what you need, this is very powerful everybody. What you need to do is get yourself into the peak emotional state that you want to anchor.

So, what you do is you stand up, so let’s say you want to anchor confidence, you want to anchor power, so what you do is you get yourself into that state, so you don’t sit in your chair and do it, you get up.

And when I do this, I do this in audiences. I just did this in Singapore, it was wild, right? So I taught the audience to set their anchor. And so, then you get yourself into a peak emotional state.

You remember a time where you felt totally confident, when you felt when you felt totally powerful, okay? And you breathe that way, and you move that way, and you think the same thoughts you were thinking.

If you never felt like that, you imagine: “how would I be standing? How would I be breathing? What would I be saying to myself if I was totally confident and totally powerful?” And then when you get to the peak of that emotion, you do your trigger.

So, mine is “I’m the best of the best of the best, yes!” Okay? Michael says, “Be a man!”. Yours could be, “Yes!”, right? And so, once you get to the peak, you make something unique. It’s gotta be unique, okay?

So, I’m not walking around my house, Igor, every day going, “I’m the best, I’m the best!” Alright? It’s not something I do. So it’s a unique thing. (Really? I thought everyone did that) And then, yeah, yeah, well, everyone will be doing it now, yeah. And just as a reminder, you don’t want to do this in front of people.

And then, you get out of the state, you shake it off, and then you build it up again, and you do it again. And you do it about 20 to 25 times, okay? You get the key to get to the peak. And at the peak, you do your trigger, whatever that trigger is going to be.

Then what happens is your brain has now connected you with the trigger to the emotion, and all you have to do is do it once. So I just had to do it once. I mean, I didn’t even really do it and my energy changed. I mean, I kind of just did. I didn’t really do it fully, right? Full out.

And so, that is the ritual that I do before I go out on stage. Therefore, when I hit the stage, I’ve got this energy, which is, again, webinar stage, doesn’t matter, that is coming out of me, which the audience can feel. It just feels different when you walk out there. So now you’re presenting with confidence and power and energy and passion, as opposed to maybe a little bit of fear. So that’s what I do.

[46:28] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting! Okay. So, we now know what you excel at, so that’s pretty clear. Would you mind sharing maybe something you suck at?

[46:40] Dave Dee:
Yeah, traffic, driving traffic, being in traffic, driving traffic, terrible! Never been good at it. I don’t want to learn how to do it. Not my forte. So that’s what I tell people, my clients, I will say to them, “if you’re looking for someone who”.

There’s a difference between lead generation, by the way, and traffic. Those are two different things, okay? So traffic is how you get people to the website. That’s not lead generation, okay?

Now I am very good at lead generation, capturing and converting, okay? But I tell people, “if you’re looking, because you’re not getting enough traffic, I’m the wrong guy to talk to. I’m a conversion guy”.

And I think that’s important, that everyone. And by the way, I never used to, like I tried to be everything, right? Which is a mistake I think a lot of people make, especially in this business, is they try to be everything there. But the truth is, you can’t be great at everything.

And so, I tell people, “Listen, if your main thing is lead generation, there’s people better than me out there. If your thing, though, is conversion, yeah, I can help you. Especially if you are going to get up there and you’re going to use speaking as part of your marketing mix, yes, I’m the guy, bar none who can help you”.

And, so you don’t look like an ass either, right? So I don’t teach the stuff where the people get on, we’ve all seen the speaker, “Hey, who wants to make more money”, that kind of stuff. That’s not me. And I used to think, now, this is years ago, I used to think that saying that would be a detriment, and it’s not, it’s not a detriment.

In fact, it’s a positive. Because there are people out there that don’t need lead generation or traffic help, right? They’re having a conversion problem, and those are the people who I deal with. Somebody else is better, who’s way better at me than traffic and lead gen, I’ll just tell them, You should go to somebody out and go to this person, because they’re better at it than me.

But if you want to convert, specifically if you want to convert from speaking, man, I can absolutely help you do it, right? And I think that that is important. It wasn’t always like that for me. I tried to dabble in a whole bunch of different things.

[49:28] Igor Kheifets:
I thought you’re just gonna say something like dancing, but that’s fair enough.

[49:35] Dave Dee:
Oh, oh, God! Oh, if you want to go personal, anything, handiwork, dude, I am the worst, okay? I changed some light bulbs the other day, this is not, you think I’m making a joke, but I’m not. I changed some light bulbs the other day, and I was just like, so (oh yeah)

I got myself fired up, dude, and yeah, and I got this, we’ve got this friend who’s just amazing at that stuff. And my wife always says to me, my wife, Kalia, who’s also my business partner, says to me, “You know what, why don’t you get Mark to help you?” Meaning, why don’t you call Mark over to do it?

So yeah, personally, there’s a ton of stuff I’m not great at. But from a business standpoint, it is traffic. From a personal standpoint, oh, my goodness, it is any handiwork.

[50:36] Igor Kheifets:
Fair enough, I too, kind of suck at it, like I’ve never been good at it, never wanted to be good at it. And then, I heard Ken Kennedy say something like, “you just get good at this one thing, and then everything else you can solve with money” or something like that.

And that resonated so much with me that I haven’t done a single piece of handiwork in any of the houses I lived in, and I must have moved like 15 different times in three different countries. I’m really happy with that decision.

Like, I have friends who are, like, really smart lawyers and IT developers, and they do a lot of their own house building things, right? So, they know how to replace windows and put together gazebos and build a dick, you know what I mean? Like, and I’m looking at that and be like, “Why would I waste three weekends on that?” I don’t get it.

[51:31] Dave Dee:
I am with you. The one thing I’ll say is I know a lot of people that actually get enjoyment out of it. So, I was talking to this guy the other day, one of our neighbors, and he’s cutting his own lawn, right? (I hate it!) I can’t imagine anything worse than that. Well, obviously I could imagine things worse, but that’s pretty high up there. And I said to him, “why?” He says, “because I love it”. It’s like a meditation for me.

So, I think there’s people that actually enjoy it, and I think that’s one of the keys, is to develop your business around the lifestyle that you want to have. And you can make a lot of money and help a lot of people and have a sense of fulfillment and have a happy life.

I think that one of the keys to success is not just the amount of money you make, but are you enjoying what you’re doing? Is your business running your life, or have you made the decision to design a business around the lifestyle that you want to have? That’s what we did. That’s what Klea and I did is decide, “hey, no, we don’t want to have a” And I respect people who have got a big business and have got 100 employees, and I just don’t want it.

I want to be able to, earlier this year, we took six weeks, and we traveled Southeast Asia, and I’ve structured my business so I can do that. So, designing your, we went off on a different track here, but I think it’s an important one. What is the lifestyle that you want to have? What do you want your life to look like? And then work backwards from that.

Here’s what I want the business to look like, here’s how my business can support that. And it’s taken me, quite honestly, quite a while to get there, and you know that there’s going to be trade offs.

So I’ve got a friend, he’s actually a client of mine. His business did $35 million last year. No, I didn’t come anywhere close to that, but he’s got employees, and he’s got HR, and he’s got all of this stuff, and he loves it.

I don’t want any of that, right? I want a simple thing. I mean, I took my iPad, dude, and that was to Southeast Asia. I did a presentation there and worked a little, sent out some emails but for the most part, took the time off because that’s how I structured my business. I wanted that total, total freedom..

Now, we do very well, but over, well, I’m going to have $50 million from my business, which I’m not, but I’ve made a conscious choice to really create a true lifestyle business. I mean, that’s the name of your podcast, right? The ListBuilding Lifestyle, and it’s true, and you can do that. You just have to make the conscious decision to do it.

[54:44] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, that’s better. I’m with you, man. I don’t know if my decision was conscious or not, but I envy those who build incredibly big businesses, especially when they’re like, similar to mine, in the structure, like there’s one guy who’s got a 20 Million a year business.

But there are some responsibilities he’s taking on that I’m just not willing to take on, so (right) again, really, really proud of him and envy him for what he built. But when I’m kind of putting it on, like stepping into those shoes, I be like, “No, no, I’m not, I’m not!”

[55:23] Dave Dee:
Yeah, 100%. And one of the things is, Igor, is that we have to be and everyone needs to be happy with their decision, right? So if you’re looking at that guy and you’re constantly jealous or you’re comparing, one of the biggest things, especially in this world that we live in, is what I call comparison despair. So you look at someone, and you say, “Wow, look how much better they’re doing than me”.

Well, first of all, in the internet marketing business, which I’m really not in that business, right? I work with professional services providers, but in the internet marketing business, a lot of it, you can’t really 100% believe, right? There’s a lot of gross sales (Multiplied by a factor of two). As opposed to the net, right? And I know a lot of these people that present themselves as being super successful, but then you get behind the curtain and! Anyway.

But, comparison despair is when you, so let’s take you for an example. You compare yourself to this guy, that’s 20 million, and you’re like, “Ah, I’m not making 20 million. Wow, man, that guy’s so” and you start comparing, well, you made choices so that if you made the same choices as him, you could get to that number, you’ve decided, but you’ve got to be happy with those choices.

You can’t have it. “Oh, look at what that person is doing. But I don’t want to do what they did. I don’t want to have 100 employees and HR and that”, (HR) yeah, right? “I don’t want to have any of that”, but you can’t say, “well, then I want that business”, because you don’t want that, because you’re not doing the stuff to get it.

So to me, it’s lifestyle and fulfillment. So before we started rolling this, I haven’t performed for pay as a mind reader in years. Now I would do it before the night, before I went out and spoke and things like that.

But for two years, I’ve been working on a new show, which I just debuted on Sunday, and I’m getting paid to go to Texas and do it next week. And some people said, “Well, why do you want to do that?” Because I missed it, right? I love it. I’m not getting rid of my core business, but it fulfills me, it makes me happy, right? And it’s a passion still of mine that I want to do.

And so, I think that the key is to design your business so that you can live that lifestyle that you want and feel fulfilled and make the money that you want to make, just don’t compare it to somebody else who made a completely different choice than you make.

[58:30] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, I agree. It all comes down to choices, like at the end of the day that you’re making, and being able to take extreme ownership of your decisions and therefore the outcomes, is another big thing that one is to realize, right? (100%) But one last question, is there a marketing trend that’s pissing you off right now?

[58:56] Dave Dee:
Yeah, it’s the way that people are using AI. (right?) So, I use AI, I use chat GPT, literally every single day. But I do not treat it as my be all and end all. So, the way that I frame it is the AI is a B or a C level copywriter, or a B or a C level marketer, and I am the copy chief, okay?

So, in a business, people don’t know the copywriting business, and in a business where they have a ton of copywriters, there’s somebody called the copy chief, that’s the boss. That’s the guy that approves the final thing. Make suggestions to the copywriters about what’s good, what’s not good, what needs to be changed.

And there’s so much AI generated content, which is crap, especially the marketing that’s coming out. And you can see that it’s AI, right? It’s got no personality to it, it’s got no passion to it. It looks like AI. It reads us flat.

There is a great way to use it, but just to go in and say, “Hey, write me a sales letter” or “write me an email about x” is the wrong way to go about it. And it’s diluting the effectiveness of people’s marketing, and it looks terrible.

Part of business, at least in the folks that are selling a professional service, is selling yourself, right? So, not just selling the outcome, not just selling the product or the service, the result of that, but selling YOU. Why should I be doing business with YOU?

Well, if you’re generating generic AI, generated content that any other financial advisor, any other estate planning attorney, any other butcher baker or candlestick maker could slap their name on, then you’re not selling yourself.

But what’s interesting is I never made this connection. It’s no different than it used to be before AI. Everyone copied everybody else. Everybody in the institutional financial advisor was doing a dinner seminar. They’re all sending out the postcard with a picture of a steak on it, right? You could substitute.

In fact, Kennedy is a great way to end this. Kennedy called it, way back in the day, “marketing incest”, that’s the term he used, because everybody’s copying everybody else, and the marketing just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber.

And now what’s happening is you’re getting just generic AI generated marketing, void of the person’s personality, and it is further commoditizing them when it should be the opposite. That’s why I like speaking as a major piece of the marketing and sales tool.

Because when you get up in front of an audience and you tell your story, they actually get to know you, and some will like you, some won’t like you, that’s fine, but the people that do like you will buy from you.

And provided that your presentation is good, and there still is no better way to generate higher value clients than that, because it’s YOU. They get to know you, they get to know your personality, they get to see you. You can’t do that with a generic, AI generated piece of marketing.

[1:02:37] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, it is a good way to end it, all right. Well, guys, if you like Dave, I like Dave, you should be liking Dave, and he’s got, he’s saying, lots of really cool stuff, and he’s got even more to share with you. You should go to davedee.com and sign up for a daily Dee mail to get more value from Dave.

Also, if you have a service or a product or something that you’re selling, I recommend reaching out to him for consulting, coaching, etc, because he’s clearly knows what he’s doing, and he’s one of the one of the OGs in the game.

[1:03:16] Dave Dee:
Yeah, Old is the key, old is the key word there, dude.

[1:03:22] Igor Kheifets:
Yes. So before we wrap this up, maybe your favorite Dan Kennedy quote?

[1:03:30] Dave Dee:
God! There’s a lot of them, I’ll give you the one that changed my business and my life. The Dan Kennedy quote was: “it’s more important to be a master marketer than it is to be a master of your craft”.

Dan was not saying you don’t have to be good at what you do. What he was saying is you need to focus on being the marketer of your product or your service, right? And not just the practitioner of it, because that shifts your focus to where it is, where it should be, see?

I used to think, because, and everyone thinks this, because it is what we’re taught: “If you just get really great at what you do, you’ll be successful”. Now in a fair world, that should be it, all right? The person who’s the best at what they do should be the most successful. But guess what? That’s not what it is.

You do need to be good at what you do, but you need to focus on marketing. And when I made that mental shift from “I am a magician or a mentalist” to “I’m a marketer of entertainment services”, everything changed. Because my focus went from just working on my show to working on the marketing of my show, and that was a game changer for me.

[1:04:56] Igor Kheifets:
Nice. All right, “don’t be great at what you do, be great at marketing what you do” That pretty much sums it up. So Dave, thank you so much for spending this time with me, I really appreciate it, and I know you got a new book coming out in a couple of years, so we’ll keep.

[1:05:14] Dave Dee:
Yeah, we just signed the book deal, just signed the book deal.

[1:05:18] Igor Kheifets:
Guys, watch out for that book in two years.

[1:05:21] Dave Dee:
Watch out for the book. Keep it on your radar. Put in your calendar, 2027.

[1:05:26] Igor Kheifets:
Yes. So again, I really appreciate it, and until next time we chat, have a good one.

[1:05:30] Dave Dee:
Thanks everybody.

[1:05:26]
Thank you for listening to The ListBuilding Lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at www.listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com, now to claim your free package!