The key to launching and growing any business is to have an attractive character in place. People don't connect with brands, they connect with people! After acquiring Dan Kennedy's Magnetic Marketing business, I knew that implementing a new Attractive Character was exactly what needed to happen for its continued success. In this episode, I'll share insights on how to create an Attractive Character that resonates with your target audience. I'll break down the essential elements of an Attractive Character, and how to integrate them into your marketing strategies.

You ask my kids, "What's the biggest drink in the world?" They're like, "I don't know." And then if I'm like, "Who's the biggest YouTuber in the world?" They're like, "Logan Paul." I'm like, "What's his drink?" "Prime." They know instantly because they don't connect with Prime, they connect with Logan. That's the thing people don't understand. So having attractive character is essential to be able to grow, to be able to connect to people. 

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Saga. In this episode we talk about, how do you change the attractive character?

Hey, this is Russell Brunson, welcome back. Today, we are talking about the Magnetic Marketing challenge. And this is important, because obviously we've done a lot of challenges in ClickFunnels, and Marketing Secrets in all of our different businesses, but this one is different because one of the major goals of this challenge was to actually change the attractive character.

And that's what I talk about today because I get so many of you guys, when you hear the concept of attractive character, because I talk about it in all three of my books: DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets. I always talk about having an attractive character. And the pushback I get from you guys, because I see it. I see it in the DM's, I see the messages, I see the posts online, and it's like, I don't want to be attractive character because then, I can never sell my business. And that's what people always say. So a lot of times, they don't become the attractive character and their business never gets to the spot where it can be sellable anyway. Especially in today's world, having attractive character is one of, if not the most important things, because people don't connect today with brands. They connect with people.

You ask my kids, "What's the biggest drink in the world?" They're like, "I don't know." And then if I'm like, "Who's the biggest YouTuber in the world?" They're like, "Logan Paul." I'm like, "What's his drink?" "Prime." They know instantly because they don't connect with Prime, they connect with Logan. That's the thing people don't understand. So having attractive character is essential to be able to grow, to be able to connect to people. Traffic, ads, connections, suddenly all this stuff is based on a character, which is one of the premises of everything we do when we talk about ClickFunnels.

But the question's like, well, what do I do? How do I build this thing? And no one's going to want to buy if I'm the attractive character. So that's what I want to talk about today.

So as you guys know, Dan Kennedy is the attractive character in that business. And it's interesting because when Dan sold the company, sold it to Bill Glazer, and then Bill Glazer co-branded together. So it was Dan and Bill. In fact, he even changed the name from, I think it was Kennedy Inner Circle at the time. He changed it to Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle, and it became GKIC. For all the old school people, you remember, it was GKIC for a decade. After Bill sold it to another company, they... I don't know what they did initially. They just kind of ran it to the ground. They didn't know what they were doing.

Actually, it was interesting. They actually tried to get rid of the attractive character. Like what, we don't need Dan, we have all the training. They tried to almost snuff Dan out, which is weird. You cover the attractive character and sales went down in the company to the point where eventually, I was able to buy it. Now when I bought it, for me, obviously, Dan is still the attractive character, but Dan also isn't going to do what I do as an attractive character. I'm on Facebook Lives and podcasts and interviews, I'm traveling the world, and I'm speaking at events. A lot of things I do that I'm not going to get Dan Kennedy to do as much as I want him to. I tried to put in his contract, he would not do TikTok ads. He just refused. I don't know why, but he did in the contract, was willing to write a weekly fax, so we got those coming in. Almost as good as a TikTok ad, but he wasn't willing to do some things.

And so initially, when I bought the company, I kind of co-branded me and Dan because we need somebody to be out in front. And so the first year of me owning Magnetic Marketing, you'll notice that I was on the sales videos. And as I was doing it, the role I was taking was not of co-branding. I was looking at myself as I was the reporter. Like I'm the reporter. There's this guy. He's my mentor, he's my hero, he's Dan Kennedy, which he is. And so I was reporting on him bringing back the best stuff.

Here's what I learned from Dan. Here's what Dan's doing. I brought him to Funnel Hacking Live, and I interviewed him, and I let him be the star of the show. And for a year, I did that. So that way, everyone in my world and ClickFunnel's audience now became very familiar with Dan. They fell in love with him. We've got five or six thousand people now on his newsletter.

That first phase worked. But after a year into this business, I'm like, I can't keep being the attractive character for ClickFunnels and then a partial attractive character for Magnetic Marketing. We need somebody who can take that role, who can be the front of it, who can be running the events, who can be doing the mastermind groups, who can do all those things.

And so when I had my day with Dan Kennedy, when I had a chance to fly out to Cleveland and spend time with him in his home in the basement, that's one of the questions I asked him. I was like, I can't. I'm being stretched thin amongst all the things I'm doing. And I was like, I need somebody who you think represents the face of Magnetic Marketing the best. Somebody who is a student, who has done this. Ideally, someone who's done it both in the brick and mortar world, because so much of Magnetic Marketing was based off of brick and mortar companies, but also who's done it on the online and the info product world and someone who can relate to both sides of it. And I asked Dan that, who is there somebody who could be that person? And it was cool because he wasn't like, well, here's five people you could pick from.

He came back to me and said, there's one. He's like, the person I would recommend is Marty Fort. And I'd only met Marty once. I'd seen him, but I didn't really know much of his story. I'm like, well, tell me a story. He said, well, Marty had a music school, like a brick and mortar physical location. People came and learned music from him. And when he learned about Magnetic Marketing, Dan Kennedy based marketing, he went and he blew up that school. Maxed the capacity. He opened like a dozen other schools, had success there, applying magnetic marketing to physical actual stores. Then he said he got so good at that, he said, I'm going to teach other music schools how to do the same thing. So he created information business and started teaching schools that, and then used that info, used Dan Kennedy marketing, to launch info business.

And start the business. And then started with a course and then an event, and then a mastermind and a coaching program. And now the info business is ,I think he said three times bigger than the other one, because he's done both sides of it. And he's someone who, yeah, he's a Dan Kennedy disciple like me who followed him and said, now he could be the person who could become the front of this. And so I messaged Marty, I was like, would you be interested? And luckily he said, "yeah," he was honored. He he'd love to do it. And so we started putting the pieces together. It started with Funnel Hacking Live. Me, Marty went to Dan Kennedy's hotel room and we spent time kind of talking about how this whole thing would work. And so that was the game plan. But obviously we still have, Dan is still the attractive character of the company. He's the core personality, his core teachings, trainings, frameworks, philosophy, everything that we're leveraging. But Marty, we want to transition to be the front.

And so I thought the best way to start that is by doing a challenge. That way everybody in the community can be introduced to him. But at the same time, we don't want to lose Dan in the equation. I've seen a lot of people who have, in fact, other people had bought Dan's company in the past. I've seen other people who've tried to do this. They try to take the guru out of it. They try to take that person out. And when they snuff out the voice that people are there to hear, that's when things collapse. And so the vision I had as we were creating this is if you've ever been to Tony Robbins' UPW, Tony used to teach for four days. The whole event was Tony teaching. Four days from him getting you in state, you're jumping around, you're doing a bunch of stuff. But then eventually Tony's voice started going, started losing his voice.

That's why Tony talks like this now instead of nor because he was doing so many events, his voice was having problems. So then Tony brought in someone named Joseph McClendon. Anyone who's ever been to UPW, Joseph McClendon, he's kind of the sub attractive character. And Joseph now runs the days that Tony's not there. So Tony's there day one and day four, I believe. Day one and three, yeah, day one and three. And then Joseph McClendon teaches day two and four. But what's cool is that Joseph doesn't just get up there and now start teaching Joseph-isms for the next the entire day. He's there to talk about how he's applied Tony's principles, but then they push it back and they show videos of Tony, which if you've ever been to the UPW in day two, it's like Joseph's on on stage talking about a principal, show me how it worked in his life. And then they cut to a video clip. Tony goes and teaches it. Joseph comes back out, reinforces it, and they keep doing that for the other two days.

And so I was like, if we could do something like that, that would be the magic. Cause I'm sure, yes, I could pay Dan and we could weave Dan into this challenge and it'd be amazing. But I want to, what's going to happen someday when Dan's done? When he retires or whatever, we needed to figure out the model today so it could be sustainable over time. And so for the challenge I made Marty the face of it. Marty was the face we talked about when people opted in the, it had Marty's Marty and Dan Kenny's face on the registration page. After people registered for the challenge on the thank you page, we had an upsell for the No BS newsletter for the MIFGE.

And so we had Marty actually do the one who was actually pitching that. He said, I'm excited to be spending time with you guys over the next five days and one of Dan Kennedy's students, I love him and I'm going to be your lead trainer over the next five days. And so I just wanted to say hi. And by the way, this is why you need a newsletter. And he was able to talk about what it's meant, his life, why it's so important and why they need to buy it. So we were able to use him as an attractive character there. Then when the challenge actually started, again, Dan was not part of the challenge. Instead, it was Marty teaching a principal or philosophy, showing how to apply it to his business, and then we pushed it to video of Dan from the past. Dan teaching one of his Renegade Millionaire seminars or one of his half day events, or at one of his super conference or info summits teaching the principle we needed.

So he'd pushed the video, Dan would teach the principal Marty would come back, be able to reinforce the principle, talk about it and show it other people's lives. And that's what we did for the five days back and forth and back and forth. And obviously for me, I was a little nervous because it's different, right? How's this going to work? Can we bring somebody else in? Is the community going to like him? Are they going to connect with him? Is he going to be able to sell at the end of it? Marty sells people at his events, but he doesn't sell them the way that I like to sell. He had never done a challenge before, so we had to go back and sit down and with him, spend time leading up to teaching him, okay, here's the challenge framework. I had to teach him the perfect webinar, right?

Because perfect webinar script is basically, that's what the challenge funnel is. You're breaking that, instead of a 90 minute webinar, you're breaking out in five day event. And so I teach him how to structure the content for day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then we get to the offer, how do you structure the pit, the stack and the clothes? So we had to go through all of that with him. And man, Marty's an amazing student. He was studying, he was learning, he was writing and rewriting and pitching and practicing, and it was just awesome. And so when we got down to it and the challenge actually happened, he went in there and did an amazing job. But when all said and done, the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is like, do people buy on day four? If they did, it worked. If they didn't, then something was wrong in the way.

So this was for Marty, this was basically trial run to see if he could actually do it right. And what's cool is that we went through the whole process, just from the registration page, people register, and on the thank you page, we had the MIFGE offer that pushed people into no BS newsletter. I think we had 600 people that signed up for the newsletter, which was a huge win. Adding 600 people to continuity before the challenge even started is always a big win. And then we did a challenge day one, day two, day three. And then day number four is where Marty had his first chance, the first time ever doing the stack in the clothes, which again, if you've been in my world and you've studied the perfect webinar, it's the secret. It's the most powerful thing I can teach about at close sales to the masses is the stack and the close.

And he executed it flawlessly. And we saw the sales start flying in that day, the next night, the next day he did kind of a re-pitch, which was great as well. And then we watched over the next 48 hours before, as we did the cart close down sequence, the sales kept coming in for the thousand dollars offer that we made at the end of it. And when all was said and done, over a quarter million dollars in sales, over $250,000 we made from the pitch that Marty did during the challenge. And so it was fun. Now, obviously I could spend this podcast talking about challenge, structure and format, but that's not the point of this. This was us saying, okay, we need to do something to bring in another track to care someone who in five years from now, 10 years now, that the community can connect with, they can understand someone who's not going to try to take all of the so many people, especially people in the past who bought Dan's company that want to make it about them.

Oh look, I'm the owner, I'm the person. And for me, it's like, I want Dan to be the superstar. This is not about me propping myself up. This is about propping Dan up. And Marty did such a good job of being willing to do that, right? And so I wanted him because for the next five, 10 years, he's the kind of person who continue to prop up Dan and he'll get all the significance he wants and needs. But he'll do that by propping up Dan and telling the story about Dan Kennedy and how he's changed his life and the philosophies and principles. And I think that especially after the first run, I'm excited we have the next few things set up with Marty to keep going forward. But my goal and my hope, my dreams, he'll be the forward facing, attractive character of magnetic marketing moving forward for the next decade or more.

And then be able to weave in the teaching the timeless principles and teachings to Dan Kennedy in the same kind of way as we're moving forward. We have live stuff we're doing with Dan, we're filming each of these pieces knowing that this may be a challenge in the future. This might be a webinar in the future, this might be a live event. And so we're trying to capture as many of those things as possible with Dan while we've got him and as long as we got him before he moves into his retirement, which hopefully never actually comes. But that was the goal with that was kind of the exercise. And on top of it, obviously we did challenge funnel. If you heard me talking about the linchpin, you did the linchpin, you got people in the continuity, got people to buy the high ticket version of the continuity.

It flawlessly executed the linchpin formula that I've been talking about and teasing about. Those are funnel hiking, life sought. So it's exciting, it worked. But the biggest success for me was understanding how to put in an attractive character that takes the weight off of yourself. Initially, when you start a business, it's going to be you, right? Initially it was Dan Kennedy. He was the one that did this all. He was on speaking on stages around the world. But when he got to a point where I don't want to keep doing this, how do I do it? He had to find someone else. For while it was Bill Glazer, and now moving forward in the future, it's going to be Marty Fort. And so for you, I want you to think about the same thing. I am a big believer that you need an attractive character to launch your business.

It's the thing that gets it off their ground. It's the thing that, it's the ads, it's the connection, it's the relationship with you and the audience initially, but understanding like, hey, if I want to sell someday, I can't. It can't just be me, right? So bringing another attractive character, I've seen people successfully do it where there is, there's a man they're bringing in a female face now it cuts the workload in half, or they bring in three women and three men, and all of a sudden they become one of many experts. But it initially still starts with one as the attractive character. Using that to get the business off the ground, get it into the stratosphere, and then it starts thinking strategic, okay, how do I start replacing myself in different places? You'll notice this is happening in the Click Funnels ecosystem over the next 24 months or so, you'll continue to see my face because I'm going to continue talking to you guys about funnels and all the cool things related to that.

But you'll probably start noticing other faces, other voices, other people as well. And this is all part of the long-term strategic play. So that someday if I decide I want to retire, I'll go read a book or go write some more books or whatever I want to do that won't affect the health of the actual business. And you do that by thinking strategically about how to replace yourself as an attractive character moving forward. So hope this helps you guys as you're looking through. There's a big Magnetic Marketing update. Again, the company is thriving. I'm having so much fun with it. And the best part about this is I got a fax from Dan this weekend because Dan's my hero. He's my mentor. He's like the person that I first got into this business. I always wanted to impress him and I didn't want to come into this business and be the guy who was trying to leverage him to get credibility or anything.

I wanted to put him on a pedestal. And so I got in the facts from him. It said, at the end of the fax is best, Dan. And they said, PS, it is a pleasure working with you. And I believe that we are doing good work. What I hear from present and past members and clients who are our members it is all positive, which never happened with any of the previous owners, even back to Bill. Which is literally the greatest compliment I could have possibly gotten from Dan. So that said, we've got a lot of work to do with Magnetic Marketing, more cool things coming. We've got some cool new books coming out. Dan and I are co-authoring a book right now.

It's some really fun stuff. So I'm excited to share it all with you guys. Thank you guys so much for subscribing. If you're not a member of the No BS newsletter yet, surprise surprise, it is officially sponsoring this video on this podcast. So go to nobsletter.com, go get your huge moneymaking kit. I think you get like $11,000 worth of moneymaking goodness for free when you sign up for the NO BS newsletter. So go to nobsletter.com to go get that. And there's my shameless plug. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to y'all soon.