The skinny on Dan Kennedy

For my Jimmy buddies...

Dan Kennedy is one of those gurus. I declined to put sneer quotes around "gurus" because he seems to be the real deal. By that I mean that the things he teaches seem to work. You know--people who implement them get actual results. I met a few of them at yesterday's inaugural Glazer-Kennedy Virginia chapter meeting. One woman started doing the things he suggests in September and has apparently doubled business.

What does he teach? No-frills, no-nonsense marketing. In fact, if you check out any of his two dozen (or so) books, they all seem to be called the same thing: "The No B.S., Ultimate, No Holds BArred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide to Whatever." I've read his "No B.S." direct marketing and wealth attraction books and got a ton of ideas from them. The information in them is straightforward and common sense. But there's so much glitz and flash to a lot of marketing these days--big marketing, anyway--that at first these principles seem counter-intuitive. For example, a long-form sales letter with a very predictable pattern might seem like a waste of time and effort--particularly if you're writing it--but hey, it works.

(Personally, I detest such letters and skip to the bottom to get to the price, but like I said, it works. We used the exact same techniques at my former job in our direct mail campaigns).

Now, the catch--it's definitely a religion, my friends. At the ground level, your basic membership gets you a $50 per month newsletter that gives you a taste of this or that advice packed between acres worth of ads for upcoming conferences and membership upgrades. You can end up spending thousands of dollars per month just to get into the various mastermind groups and conferences.

I've heard that you can pretty much get all the same information from his books, and that after a year, the newsletter just recycles the old stuff. However, the books themselves (at least the two I've read) are about half Dan Kennedy, and half personal testimonies of his business partners and studets. I wouldn't say that the second half is useless--far from it, actually--but when you buy a book by somebody, you want ALL of it to be written by the people in the byline.

All-in-all, I can recommend his stuff with a caveat that should be common sense--there's no magic "Easy Button." He doesn't sell his stuff as a silver bullet, I should note, but he sells in an industry that at least heavily implies there is. As best as I can tell, the real benefit of higher membership isn't some new secret gnostic wisdom, but access to the real users and winners of DK's marketing principles. That might be worth it, I would think, if you have a hard time finding like-minded successful people.

One note about yesterday's meeting--there was a familiar group there. Some new faces, but about half were people I've seen at various REI meetings. I got the impression that they were still looking for that silver bullet, that four-leaf clover, etc. It was a little bit sad, to tell you the truth. On the other hand, it was refreshing to meet a few fellow entrepreneurs who, in their words, "wouldn't know we were in a recession if they didn't read the papers."