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Dave Dee is the head of marketing at Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle. He started his career owning a small chain of magic shops and a karate school, but it was his pursuit of professional magic that set his path ablaze.

After utilizing direct response marketing, Dave astonishingly increased his performances from just three to over 25 shows monthly in less than 90 days. Recognizing his knack for marketing, Dave transitioned to teaching his innovative strategies, working with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs over the past 16 years.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [1:36] How hitting rock bottom can fuel a positive transformation
  • [4:23] Utilizing positive thinking to help overcome personal challenges and fuel business success
  • [7:55] Insights into Dave’s journey from struggling magician to marketing guru
  • [8:26] The importance of family and being a world-class parent in achieving true fulfillment
  • [12:07] Understand Dave’s unique approach to goal-setting through intention-based value setting
  • [13:34] How Dave paid off $80,000 in debt in just one year
  • [14:21] The abundant resources available at GKIC for direct response marketing
  • [16:09] Dave promises a mind-bending live interactive magic experience for a future episode

In this episode…

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, wondering how to turn your passion into a thriving career? Dave Dee’s story resonates with anyone who has faced challenges in pursuing their dreams. How did he navigate through tough times to emerge victorious?

Delve into Dave’s remarkable journey, from his humble beginnings to becoming a powerhouse in the world of direct response marketing. Through the lens of his personal and professional life, Dave sheds light on the pivotal role of mindset and mentorship in achieving greatness. He discusses the transformative power of positive thinking and decisive action  and opens up about the importance of family and fatherhood, emphasizing how his contemporary family life ultimately stands as his proudest achievement.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz hosts Dave Dee, a direct response marketing virtuoso and former professional magician. Through desperation and determination, Dave transformed his life, elevating his magic career, and eventually moving into teaching and leading at Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle. The two discuss the importance of mastermind groups, setting value-based intentions over goals, and creating daily rituals to ensure success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related episode(s):

Quotable Moments:

  • “I went from doing three shows a month to over 25 shows a month in less than 90 days, and that was when I knew the power of direct response marketing.”
  • “If it were not for my desperation to change my life, I might never have discovered my potential.”
  • “The magic in my life isn’t just from performing on stage, but from creating moments that are priceless with my kids.”
  • “Positive thinking needs to be coupled with action; otherwise, it’s like trying to light a wet match.”
  • “When you’re huddled in a corner, whether metaphorically or literally, nothing happens. You need to take action to manifest change.”

Sponsor for this episode

At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.

We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.

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When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.

The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.

We make distribution easy.

We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRx BarsYPOEOLending TreeFreshdesk, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?

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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…

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Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 0:00

I’m Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, I’m the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders and how they overcome big challenges in life and business. I’m especially excited Dave Dee, I am a huge fan of magicians and marketers, which we both have. Today we have Dave Dee, one of the top direct response marketers. He helps run Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle known as GKIC. And that is the top echelon if you don’t know what it is a top lash line of marketing, David runs the marketing there.

Dave started a small chain of magic shops in karate school before pursuing his dream of being a professional magician. And after applying direct response marketing, of course, Dave went from going three shows a month to averaging over 25 shows a month in less than 90 days. And of course, people want to know, what are you doing? They want to pick his brain. So now over 16 years, he’s been teaching these insane methods to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Dave, thanks for joining me.

Dave Dee 1:11

Hey, man, I’m super happy to be here and really excited about this.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:16

So since this is Inspired Insider, I want to hear and he talked a little bit, referenced a little bit, but you know, for someone who may be experiencing it now, what’s been the lowest most the lowest moment, and then how you pushed forward through it through that tough time.

Dave Dee 1:36

So there’s, there’s two lowest moments, okay. The first is a business lowest moment. And the second is a personal lowest moment. And the personal one was more difficult to push through than the business one. So the lowest moment was at the karate school. When my wife at the time, Tracy was working two jobs. She was a school teacher, a special ed teacher, and she had to work at, it still bothers me to this day.

This is like 18 years, by the way, 19 years, but to this day, I still feel it. She had to, she was after school, she went and was a cashier at Target. Because I was making no money. And when I say no money, I was making no money. I was losing money. I was living on credit cards. What helped me push through that?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 2:35

Why was that? Why does it still bother you today? What about it?

Dave Dee 2:41

Oh, because I mean, because the story is, in a year, she had quit both of her jobs, and was a stay at home mom. I don’t know why it still bothers me. But it still does. It still can because I go back and get the method acting right. I go back and I put myself in that place. And I think that’s valuable to do if you’ve struggled because there’s people, your customers are the people if you’re writing copy for someone else, there’s they’re struggling, right. You’ve got to be able to feel that. So what helped me persevere through that was I was always into, I was always a positive thinker.

I was always constantly studying the Jim Rohn thing: take charge of your life, the program takes charge of your life. That’s the first program I listened to for Mr. Rohn. Just the title. Just the title was amazing, right. And I remember him talking about in that program, he talks about how his mentor, he had a mentor, Mr. shelf. And when he was a young man, he went to Mr. Sharp with his list of reasons, literally a list of reasons why he wasn’t successful, why he wasn’t doing better.

You know, my parents aren’t supportive, they aren’t supportive of me, the government taxes too much, my job doesn’t pay enough. And Mr. Chef took his list and looked at me and said, Mr. Rohn, this is a fine list. This is a fine list. There’s only one problem with your list. You ain’t on it. Right. You’re not on the list of the reasons why you’re not doing well. Right. And so listening to that going. I think it’s a hard pill to swallow though. Yeah, I think part of it is luck, or Divine Presence, whatever, go into that go and get that seminar going to go into that seminar. I didn’t go there to see Dan.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:23

You know, there’s three people who have told almost the exact same story. Perry Marshall is one of them. He said, I just went to the Success Seminar. Dan was at the end of it. And then I became Google. As you know, it plays out several times from talking to people.

Dave Dee 4:40

Yeah. And so that pushed through it was getting up the energy through this positive motivation, and just doing something forcing myself to do something. And really that came down to desperation. I mean, so you know, again, quote Jim Rohn you Got that he calls it the day that changes your life forever.

The day where you finally say, it’s enough, I’m not living like this any frickin’ more. Okay. And so it really came down to desperation and a bit of anger for that one. The next lowest point was when I got divorced. And that was brutal. That was brutal. For me that was brutal for my business. And I remember doing four seminars, all of them lost money, all of them, because I just was not in the game.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 5:36

It’s just so grueling.

Dave Dee 5:41

So grueling, and financially grueling, and, and, but again, a lot of that is just so just time, right? It’s just time. And so I went back to my roots, I listened to Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy. And I talked to friends who were supportive. I belong to a mastermind group outside of GKIC. All right, it’s amazing. Perry Marshall is in it, right? Just brilliant, brilliant pot, guys, that, that really helped me. Really, that was one of the main things if you don’t belong to a mastermind group, you got to get into a mastermind group, and we’ve got some GPAC, maybe you have whatever it is, you gotta get into a professionally run mastermind group, right.

So I mean, I paid for my mastermind group outside of GKIC to practice what I preach. So that was a huge one. And you know, just then just getting just doing it just again, say, Okay, listen, I gotta take action. But the point is, I know that some people watching this right now are really struggling. I know they’re doing great, and life is great. And all of that, but I can tell you, I’ve been there. Right? I have absolutely been there. Yeah. And I’m telling you, it can change, and it can change fast for you, you got to believe it. And you just gotta start taking action, you got to start implementing stuff, you got to do stuff. And don’t even worry if it works. Because not to get metaphysical.

But when you put that out into the universe, right, and you start doing stuff, good stuff begins to happen to you. When you’re huddled in the corner, either metaphorically or huddled in the corner, right? Literally, nothing will happen for you. So all the positive thinking in the world that you need but then you need that positive thinking to stir you to take action. Positive thinking on its own isn’t going to manifest anything. Gary Halbert said a great thing he said, you accomplish a lot more with movement than you do with meditation. I’m a meditator. So I meditate, okay. And I’m positive thinking I do all that kind of stuff. But you’ve the positive thinking purpose of it, is to help you get through these tough times and motivate you to take action. And those are how I got from struggling to success.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 7:55

Dave I appreciate you sharing that. Because those are really tough, tough things that have happened and talk about it. On the other side of things. What’s been one of the proudest moments?

Dave Dee 8:09

My kids, nothing to do with business.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:12

Yeah, tell me about that, because I can see you have five kids. That’s the most impressive thing about the whole interview. Forget about everything you just said. This is the most impressive thing actually.

Dave Dee 8:26

Yeah, no question about my awesome kids are way better. My number one job is being a daddy. Yeah, by far that’s my number one value, by far more than making any of that. So I’ve got two of my own Gina and David. And then I’ve got three stepkids, and I just recently got married. There we go. Congratulations. Yeah, awesome woman.

So I got three more kids. And that’s a whole other topic, we want to have another call. We can say above that I call it intention based value setting as opposed to goal setting.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:02

What do you mean?

Dave Dee 9:03

And so I’ve got my journal right here. And in my journal, I have what my greatest values are. My definition of this, by the way, it’s not. We’re getting way off the track here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:16

There’s no track. Yeah.

Dave Dee 9:20

Okay, I’m happy to do another one. Because this is big. This is more than value. So when people say what are your values, what my values are honesty, integrity, okay? That’s what I’m talking about. What do you value? What, what is most important to you in your life? So I’ve got a list of my values here. So my children being a great father, being a world class husband, I’ve got all of the things living a spiritual life, all of those things. Now, how do I define those things?

So what is my definition of what that is? All right. Then the next phase is okay, what are three things that I need to do and three fundamentals that I need to do on a consistent basis in order to actually live those values. And I make sure that I create them, then I create rituals around those things. Yeah. So that they happen automatically. So success becomes inevitable. I don’t have to think about it. So for example, I’ve got a morning ritual, my morning ritual, we can go over it, but it consists of mental, spiritual, physical, so I get up, I brush my teeth, all that stuff, I then do an hour, 45 minutes to an hour of yoga, followed by meditation, I then have a protein shake, and my vitamins and medicine and all that kind of stuff.

I then will then come to my journal, and I write down my three most first of all, I write down the very top of the page, what I’m most grateful for that day. Something, I’m grateful for one thing, and I just don’t write it down, I actually feel it. So I’m feeling myself with gratitude, filled with a feeling of gratitude. I’m a Christian. So I ended with, you know, thank you, Lord for all of my blessings. I then write down my MIT’s my three most important tasks for the day three, three most important tasks, at least one of those has to relate to living my value.

Right? So I can go look at my list. So hey, Okay, I gotta have it. I gotta set up a date with my daughter. So it’s just my daughter, me going out on a date? Yeah, what do you see what I’m saying? So one of those, at least one of those every single day, has to be one of my most important tasks. I’m living my values. Yeah. And that’s right, miscellaneous. So here is a list of miscellaneous things that I need to accomplish. I then go from this, and I’ll tell you why I’ll give you a resource.

It’s called bulletjournal.com, a bullet journal.com. They don’t sell anything. It’s just their process of journaling. I’ve adapted it, but I’m giving you the basics of it. Yeah. Because by having it in a journal, you’re recording your life. You’re recording your life as opposed to just having it on your Outlook calendar, I then take my most important tasks, and I go to my Outlook calendar, and I block off time for those most important tasks. I go to work, my supporting tasks.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:07

And that’s basically, this is amazing. And if you’re open to it, I’d love to, I want to respect this as a New Year’s Eve day. And I want to respect your time, I’d love to do a session on when Dave Dee, a day in the life of Dave Dee. Like yeah, waking up in the morning, sharing this until going to bed.

Dave Dee 12:24

Shared it with my team members and it got a tremendous response different from goal setting, because a lot of goals setting, it’s action based, you know, things like that, because a lot of goal setting the problem with it is there’s things that are beyond your control. So you set an arbitrary goal of making a certain amount of money, which is fine if you do that if it works for you. But there are things that are beyond your control. Right?

And what if you do everything you possibly can to maximize your income and that’s true and you don’t reach the goal that you if you did everything to maximize your income. There’s nothing else you can do. There’s just some really cool studies and we’ll do another call. There’s some really cool studies that take the opposite approach of why goal setting does not work and why goal setting can actually be detrimental to your success. I don’t buy it completely, that’s a whole other topic.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:16

Yeah, go back to the proudest moment. What was one of those moments that you put in, like that date with your daughter or with your son? What was one of those that sticks out to you as being because you wrote it down? It happened? It was so amazing.

Dave Dee 13:34

Well, getting well paying off the $80,000 worth of debt in a year was pretty damn big. Yeah, that was huge. I mean that that was huge. That was to become a professional magician. When I finally realized hey, I did it. I did make a really good freakin’ living here doing something I love that most people said I couldn’t do that was huge. Seeing my daughter on stage, having the guts as a little kid to go on stage and play the electric guitar and play a Ramone song.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:12

This has been fantastic. I really appreciate it. I mean, I could go on for hours. And I’m going to stop myself. Where should we point people towards where they should check out online?

Dave Dee 14:21

Yeah, so if you want to go if you’re not a GKIC member, you definitely want to check it out at GKIC.com We’ve got a two-month trial. We send you a bunch of stuff. It’s good stuff, but you got a two month free trial of our membership to see if you like it if you don’t like it and you know, you know, don’t continue.

But you know, it’s me. It’s Dan Kennedy. It’s some of the sharpest direct response marketers on the planet for sure training you. You get a newsletter, you get CDs, you get a whole bunch of tremendous benefits. You get to come to one of the live boot camp training sessions for free. There’s a whole bunch of good bets, so people should go check that out. And for me personally, if you’re interested in selling, then DaveDee.com.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:07

Yeah. And they can check out all your videos. I mean, they’re phenomenal. There’s talks on YouTube but DaveDee.com and the GKIC. Thank you, Dave. And I want to put a clip to one of your… I was looking for when your magic shows online, and I couldn’t find one. Is there one online? No, I want to clip it to the end of this.

Dave Dee 15:29

No, I don’t, I don’t have that. There’s no I don’t even have it. I haven’t performed professionally in years.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:35

No, I mean, it’s just an old I want to put like an old even if —

Dave Dee 15:39

I don’t even have anything, even if I did it would be Dude, it would be on a VHS tape.

Jeremy Weisz 15:42

I love — It’s fine. I’ll transcribe it. Next time.

Dave Dee 15:45

I’ll tell you what, here’s what we’ll do. Check this out. Yeah. Next, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll tease them. Next time we come on and we do this. All right, I will. I will influence the entire audience through the computer screen. We will do something live. I mean, I’ll literally read someone’s mind or project thoughts into people’s mind and we’ll prove that it actually,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:09

You know, because I mean, from a selfish standpoint, I just love this stuff. And I was looking for it because I wanted to see you in action.

Dave Dee 16:15

But we’ll do that next time. Honestly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:20

Happy New Year. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dave Dee 16:23

My pleasure. I had a great time. Thanks. Bye.