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November 25, 2025 • 19 mins

Ever wonder if the stuff we THINK we "know" about marketing is wrong?

Me too.

And it turns out the answers is ...it IS!

Sometimes.

We shouldn't take marketing "rules" as ...well ...actual "RULES."

For example, I just told a customer NOT to use a sales letter.

Which is like "Marketing Heresy!"

In this episode, I show you why.

You'll also discover an amazing marketing lesson I learned from a COP.

(This applies to everyone. You can use it immediately).

Plus you'll see what your prospects are REALLY doing ...and why it's not always a good idea to try to sell them something.

The tool I used for research and organizing my thoughts for this episode is https://oJoy.ai You can try it for free if you want 👍

#marketingmyths #professionalmarketingadvice #effectiveadvertisingtechniques #directresponseads #marketingmythsdebunked

CHAPTERS:

**0:00 - The Email That Broke Everything**

**0:45 - The $100 Million Problem**

**2:24 - Why I Committed Marketing Heresy**

**3:28 - The Machine That Already Works**

**5:34 - A Cop's Dark Secret**

**6:44 - The Question That Changes Everything**

**8:21 - Inside the Mind of a Worried Homeowner**

**12:30 - The 1% vs The 60%**

**15:42 - How Billion Dollar Brands Really Won**

**16:03 - The 11 Cent Miracle**

**18:38 - Why I Broke the Sacred Law**

**19:26 - The ONE THING you gotta do (or else none of this works**

http://frankkern.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/officialfrankkern

About Frank Kern (Prepare To Be Bored):

If you're new to my channel, my name is Frank Kern. I've been selling things online since 1999. My first 7-figure business sold downloadable audio-books about dog training. I sold it in 2007.

Over the past 26 years, I've had over 80,000 (and counting) business owners pay me for marketing advice.

I have zero credentials of any kind.

Dropped out of college to play music.

Tried that for four years and it didn't work.

I've been a pizza delivery guy, a roofer, a ditch digger, a fry-cook, a car salesman, and even did door to door sales. I was bad at all of it.

Discovered online marketing in 1999 when I saw an ad for a course about online marketing.

1999-2001, bought the reprint rights to a bunch of direct mail seminars on cassette tapes. Tried using spam to sell them. It was roughly 10000X harder than actually doing things the right way.

2003: Got sued by the government for violating advertising regulations. (If that's not bad enough, what's really embarrassing is I didn't even know that the advertising regulations existed. Turns out that ignorance is not bliss. It's simply ignorance.)

2004: Start selling downloadable "how-to" products to dog owners.

2007: That business had grown to a 7-figure business, was producing really good semi-passive income with only one product, and had a database of over 300,000 pet owners who opted in (legitimately) to learn about dog training.

…And I sold it.

2007 - 2010: Created (and co-created) some of the largest marketing campaigns in the history of the "Internet Marketing" industry. I then wrote several courses that taught people how I did it. During the process, I also got kind of "Internet Famous" even though I didn't use Social Media. The "fame" stuff was sort of cool for a while but got old because I'm an introvert.

2011 - 2021: Focused mainly on consulting, offering marketing services to more established companies, and getting good at advertising. Deliberately tried to be more "behind the scenes" and tried to become less famous. Made significantly more profit and still ended up growing my personal brand despite being reclusive.

Today: I have one client (giant tech company) …and that's plenty.

In addition to helping them, I also do all the marketing for my family's software company, https://oJoy.ai

Biggest things I learned in past 26 years (and counting):

If you build a brand based on goodwill, the brand will stay strong even if you quit trying to build it.

The best way to grow a business, a brand, and create goodwill is by helping people.

The easiest way you can convince someone that you can help them is to simply demonstrate you can help them …by actually helping them.

The fortune really is in the follow up.

Also, all this stuff is harder than it looks.

But it's not nearly as hard as being a roofer, a ditch digger, or a fry-cook.

I know because I've been all of them.

Keep your head up, use common sense, and do people right. You'll get where you want to go much faster by doing that than by trying to take short cuts.

IN CASE IT ISN'T OBVIOUS:

I make content like this because I want to sell you something eventually. It's fun to make and all …but at the end of the day,

Mark as Played

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