10:05am
Saint Paul
Serious students of direct response copywriting know the name Doberman Dan.
Dan started selling bodybuilding guides and supplements in the 1990s as a way to find freedom from his J-O-B as a police officer.
That financial freedom didn’t come quickly, though.
It took Dan some 9 failed businesses before he asked himself,
“Why did I buy THAT thang?”
…and then used the answer to build his own successful business.
Doberman Dan was gracious enough to sit with me and share his story—and a few secrets—for this episode of the Persuasion Play Podcast.
Here’s what you’ll find inside:
• Introduction—and how to say Doberman Dan’s last name! (0:00)
• The lessons Doberman Dan learned as a young cop on the mean streets in Dayton, Ohio—and how being stuck and desperate opened his eyes to self employment (1:49)
• All roads lead to Dan Kennedy (6:08)
• How Doberman Dan swiped a brick-and-mortar playbook to market his first successful info product (9:30)
• The two-step sales funnel DD perfected in the 1990s you can still use today (10:13)
• The mindset programming that keeps people stuck working a J-O-B (12:19)
• Dan’s terribly honest negotiation tactic that actually worked, allowing him to lead the “live anywhere” internet lifestyle—before ecom marketing existed! (15:00)
• The destructive changes at print magazines and newspapers which have removed ANY incentive for them to run your test ads (19:15)
• Direct mail still works—the sales and copy concepts don’t change—but there’s a NEW challenge marketers have to overcome (21:35)
• Alex Hormozi’s lead gen case study that vindicated Dan’s position about the LCV differences between free vs. paid front-end offers (26:53)
• Can you still get a copy of Doberman Dan’s direct response marketing book, Just Sell the Damn Thing? (26:26)
• Why marketers must sell “the magic pill” to give buyers what they truly need (29:02)
• Gary Halbert’s awareness technique Doberman Dan used to troll Gary himself (31:57)
• The tedious task Gary Halbert, Doberman Dan, and other direct response greats demand from their students (if you’re not already doing this, get started!) (38:00)
• The “grunt work” Dan uses to attract clients: it’s not anything you couldn’t do, too (39:55)
• An evergreen strategy to get your name in the hands of your ideal prospects (42:42)
• Doberman Dan’s advice that goes against the grain of his own mentors—and why running your business “the guru way” can make you go flat broke (43:34)
• The “3-letter alphabet agencies” keeping Dan from once again selling health supplements (45:35)
• How barriers to entry that once made selling difficult have fallen (and how this change has paradoxically made it even harder to sell) (51:24)
• Doberman Dan’s reveals the one thang “no one else can sell” …that can be worth tens of thousands of dollars (53:01)
• Social media has shifted marketing away from “value” and towards “promotion”—and how to prepare for the fallout now before everything comes crashing down (57:09)
• How AI is filling the business need for B-level and C-level copy—and the role that copywriters might play if AI eats our jobs (1:00:55)
• One thing AI will never, ever replace (1:02:19)
• The debilitating pain Doberman Dan faced to discover he is an empath—and how this overabundance of “mirror neurons” has shaped his life and career (1:05:36)
• Doberman Dan’s journey from childhood “cultural Christianity” …to studying Eastern scriptures later in life… and how it’s revealed to Dan why some succeed where others fail—even when they’re on the same path (1:10:49)
• The verse from Psalm 82—now proven by quantum physics—which can unlock incredible divinity in every one of us (1:12:31)
• The NSFW conversations Dan has that “aren’t business related” but have EVERYTHING to do with success (1:18:11)
• The ancient secrets—found in both Eastern and Western scriptures—most people don’t want to understand (1:21:30)
• Where to get all the direct response marketing knowledge you need in a single weekend to build yourself a massive income (and why that’s not enough!) (1:23:08)
• Doberman Dan’s secret weapon—used for over 800 years—that builds up your alpha brain waves, getting your nervous system into a creative, non-critical state of flow (1:23:46)
• What’s next for Doberman Dan? (1:27:35)
Wow what a convo! Thank you Dan for your time!
You can watch Doberman Dan on the Persuasion Play Podcast here on YouTube.
Find Doberman Dan online and join his email list at https://www.DobermanDan.com/
For more resources about persuasion and influence, including podcasts and book summaries, sign up for the Goldmine Marketing email list here.
Love you!
Jeffrey