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"Dan Kennedy" still sends countdown timer emails. Hormozi built his thing on free YouTube.
Guess which one is still working in 2026.
Think Big Minute #33
This week I got an email "from Dan Kennedy."
It wasn't really from Dan. Magnetic Marketing is a brand asset Russell Brunson bought a few years back. Runs out of ClickFunnels HQ in Eagle, Idaho. "Powered by ClickFunnels" sitting in the footer.
The email was running the 2014 playbook word for word. Day 2 of a 5-day challenge. Countdown timer to a live session. "Be in the room on time." "The room opens in a few hours. Decide."
Subject line: "You Do Not Need To Be Instagram Famous."
That's the confession.
Selling certainty about attention to people who feel left behind by attention. While being someone who got famous before Instagram existed.
The whole thing is upside down.
Look at who's actually growing in 2026.
Alex Hormozi spent years putting out free YouTube content. Hundreds of hours of it. When he started selling, the audience bought because they'd already watched him for years.
MrBeast built one of the biggest audiences on the planet before monetization was even on the roadmap. The brand pulls the views. The products ride the brand.
Codie Sanchez grew Contrarian Thinking as a newsletter for years before she had anything to sell. Hamza is YouTube grown. Iman Gadzhi is YouTube grown.
None of them are running cold DR.
They built audiences first. Then they sold.
The countdown timer didn't get worse. The audience got smarter.
Consumers have seen every VSL formula a thousand times. Ad platforms penalize the aggressive DR creative that used to convert. AI flooded the channel with the same five hooks rewritten in fifty styles. CPMs are five to ten times higher. The fake scarcity, the stacked bonuses, the "this page is coming down soon" worked in 2014 because they were new.
Now they read like a fax machine in a smartphone store.
Even Russell himself doesn't acquire new customers cold anymore. He runs offers to his own list. The Funnel Hacker mythology. The Two Comma Club. Twenty years of being the funnel guy in public. That's what's converting.
Strip the brand off the same offer and it dies cold.
Now here's the part I want you to take from this.
I'm not writing Think Big Minute because the world needs another business tips account.
I'm writing it to build a brand. And to discipline myself to show up every day whether I feel like writing or not.
The discipline is half the asset.
Here's how I'm doing it.
One format. Same shape every post (more or less). Every day. No breaks. No days off because I'm tired.
Stories before tips. A real moment with a real number always beats a generic principle.
Specific over vague. Named people. Real dollar amounts. Actual dates. (This post being somewthing of an exception)
You don't have to do it exactly that way. Pick a format. Stick to it. Show up long enough that the audience recognizes the cadence before they ever see the pitch.
Most DR people will never do this.
They came up in a world where the copy was the whole game. Better hook. Better stack. Better close.
They think the way out of declining CTRs is sharper writing. So they keep refining the pitch while the audience gets less and less reachable through it.
The pitch isn't the problem. The cold audience is.
You can have an excellent pitch and an excellent offer and a technically perfect funnel and you still won't move it cold in 2026 unless the audience already trusts you.
That trust gets built upstream. Not in the pitch.
Stop refining the pitch.
Start showing up daily and building the audience the pitch will eventually land with.
The offer can't outwork the absence of trust.
Think Big.
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