A glimpse at the most beautiful place on earth

There’s a road in Shangri-La that winds through narrow mountain passes from the city of Lijiang to the very first bend on Yangtze river. The Yangtze is the 4th longest river in the world, dividing China north and south. This bend a place you can see from the moon, or on any world map.

(Houses north of the Yangtze have central heating. Houses south of the Yangtze don’t.)

The road to Shigu is populated with blue transports, taxis, rickshaws, pickup trucks that belch like tractors, and the occasional donkey cart.

As you wind up and down through mountain passes, you look across contoured green terraces of farmland on either side of this winding river.

Laura and I and the three boys took a ride on this road to Shigu, the town on the famous bend in the river. They stooped on the banks of the river and picked up stones and practiced their slingshots for hours.

Shangri-La is not a mythical place, it’s real. It’s the place where I am right now. Greetings from Lijiang China. I’m sitting in the hotel courtyard outside my hotel room, and it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

For all world travelers and aspiring world travelers out there, Shangri-La belongs on your bucket list.

One of the best reasons to go to Lijiang is, you get the lap of luxury for the price of an ordinary hotel in the US. I stayed at a Westin in Cleveland a month ago and it cost about the same as the Chateau L’Act (“Fuguo” in Chinese).

Wanna see this place? It’s mouth watering. Here’s a video I shot:

If it looks this good on Youtube, you can only imagine what the real deal is like.

Ever heard of a book called “The Five Love Languages?” It’s about how different people receive love in different ways. Some people are “physical touch” people; some “words of affirmation”; some are “acts of service.” I think Laura’s love language is nice hotels :^>

I brought my daughter here in 2004 and we stayed at a guest house. It was a sort of a “Lonely Planet” type of place. It cost a whopping eight bucks a night. It’s probably $25 now, but still, if you like the low-rent backpacking approach to travel, Lijiang will suit you just fine.

Lijiang is China’s best-kept secret. Not many westerners here, but there’s a bridge in Old Town that was here in 1200AD. It’s home to an ethnic group called the Naxi, a dark-skinned people with distinctive food and dress.

This is in the foothills of the Himalayas, a few hundred miles north of Thailand and East of Tibet. 8,000 feet elevation. This is Southwest China, a part you rarely hear about. It’s the clearest blue sky you’ve ever seen with a laid back, almost hippie-like groove.

It never gets below 30 degrees F and never gets above 80. Today is December 3, it’s 55 degrees (13 degrees C) and I’m typing this in the outdoor courtyard next to a waterfall. The Chinese know this as a deluxe vacation spot, a serene escape from the relentless drive of China’s east coast.

Bryan moved here in 2000 to teach English. A year later I wanted to come visit him. I still worked at my Dilbert Cube job and we had a lot of debt and not much money. A company engaged me for some client work and we took it as a sign to just go.

Laura has always actively encouraged me to do stuff like this, even though she doesn’t have the kind of wanderlust that I have.

The client gig fell through but I went anyway. (My first-time travelogue is online in case you’re interested.) On the way there I passed through Taipei Taiwan then to Hong Kong before going to China.

I’ll NEVER forget my first trip to Asia; it was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget getting off the plane, taking the bus to the middle of Taipei and just walking around. I had to pinch myself. “DANG. I AM IN TAIWAN!!!”

My buddy Jim Cleary once told me, “Perry, you always take the scenic route.” He was right. When I got invited to speak in Australia a long time ago the travel agent said, “If you’re willing to stop in a bunch of strange places, you can go all the way around the world without paying a penny more.”

I didn’t just go to Brisbane. I stopped in Fiji first. Then after Brisbane, I went to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Singapore, and Dubai. Then Nairobi and London.

Dang, what a friggin’ head rush that was.

We started traveling long before we could “afford” or justify it. The saving grace is, if you go to the less famous parts of the world, everything costs 1/3 as much and you can squeak by. I stayed at a Youth Hostel in Hong Kong. Bryan got me a free hotel room in Lijiang the first time, but had I need to pay, could have found a place for ten bucks a night.

Oh, and also, my 2nd trip to China was mostly paid for by a magazine. I did some factory write-ups for ‘em. If you gotta go, there’s always a way….

Our first such trip was Brazil in 1999. If you have the stomach for international travel, if you have any inclination whatsoever, I think you should travel to strange and bizarre places. Here’s why:

IT HUGELY STRETCHES YOUR BRAIN. Every time I went on those trips, I could feel my brain cells struggling to absorb the experience. Occasionally you’d hear them squeaking and grinding. The time changes, the culture shock, the food, the customs, the strangeness of absolutely everything. Especially the first few times, it’s a radical experience.

Even after I came home I could feel my mind processing the experience for weeks afterwards.

You can never know how much it will broaden your horizons and your perspective. I can only promise you that when you come back, you’ll know your own inner world has become so much bigger. I never saw the world the same way again. These experiences color everything I see and do.

When I first visited Bryan I was downright jealous. Here’s a guy who gets paid $200 a month by the hotel he works for; he works about 20 hours a week; two hundred bucks a month was twice as much as any reasonable single guy could possibly spend in southwestern China. He had nary a care in the world. (At least that’s how it appeared to me.)

I was the sales manager of an ambitious little company; I had three kids; I was in the “early 30′s compression zone” of having a growing family, carrying the world on your shoulders and fighting like mad to prove yourself; I had all sorts of debts, pressures and obligations. The thought of escaping to a place like this was tantalizing.

I remember meeting an Italian girl in Kunming, she’d been backpacking through China for 5 months, living on her wits, taking odd jobs and living off the generosity of peasants.

A permanent escape would not have been a good idea. I was in a crucible then and I needed to earn my stripes. But that one week escape was a taste of heaven.

You only have to take a trip like this once, and nobody will ever be able to take your pictures or memories away from you. You can take a 1-minute vacation to Shanrgri-La any time you want.

OK, so what’s going on here in Lijiang?

Bryan has come to join us. Tomorrow we pick up our new daughter Zoe, and since he speaks fluent Mandarin, he can translate. He’s gotta ask the person questions like “Is she potty trained” and “what does she like to eat” and all that. We’re doing a few days of sightseeing before the adoption stuff gets into full swing.

Laura and the kids are here for the first time and they’re doing mighty well with the food and the strangeness of everything. Laura’s a tad anxious; doing an adoption is like giving birth, it’s reaching into the box of chocolates and pulling out…. another box of chocolates.

What kind of box did we get? The waiting is hard.

China is a different world. Everything is Chinese characters; the English translations are crude and often hilarious. The store called “Yak Meat Naxi Girl” sits right next to another store called “Yak Meat Fat Girl.” The two places sell the exact same thing: Yak meat.

Yak meat is tasty, by the way. This morning I got some Yak Butter Tea. It comes in two flavors: Sweet and Salty. Yak Butter Sweet Tea tastes, well, like milky tea. Yak Butter Salty Tea tastes like tea mixed with milk sea water. You might like it… you might not.

By the way I think tea is awesome. Most people start their day with coffee. I start mine with black tea.

There’s this joke in China – it goes like this: Three guys get on a bus, an American, a Japanese, and a Chinese.

The bus is rolling down the road and the American rolls down his window and starts throwing $100 bills into the wind.

The bus driver says, “What are you doing????!!!”

The American replies, “Heck, we’ve got so much money in America, what’s the big deal if I waste some of it?”

Then the Japanese guy rolls down his window and he reaches into his bag and starts pulling out cameras, video screens and watches and throws them out the window. They smash on the pavement below.

The bus driver replies, “What are you doing????!!!”

The Japanese says, “Heck, we’ve got so much consumer electronics, what’s the big deal if I waste some of it?”

Then the Chinese guy pops open his window, grabs a couple of passengers and throws them out the window.

The bus driver says, “What are you doing????!!!”

The Chinese guy replies, “Heck, we’ve got so many people in China, what’s the big deal if I waste a few of ‘em?”

Well, on Sunday afternoon Chinese time, we’re taking one of those Chinese people to be our daughter and live in the United States. By the time our American friends wake up, we’ll be a family of 7 instead of 6. Will share. Stay tuned!

Perry Marshall

P.S.: Laura’s got quite a few more great pictures at her blog – be sure and check ‘em out!

P.P.S.: If you’d like to be on my notification list, join it here.

Kids Playing with Needles, Tiananmen Square & Raging Capitalism

Ever see the famous 1989 picture of the student in China standing off against four tanks? That’s Beijing’s Tiananmen square. We went there yesterday. It’s vast, big enough for literally a million people.

The 1989 incident is just one of many reasons for the “Great Firewall of China,” the massive content filter manned by the Chinese government.

Subscriber Liz Parrish posted this on my blog the other day:

“I was in Guilin for 3 days in the fall of 1989. Tiananmen Square happened in June, I was in Guilin in October.

“In the gift shop of the hotel, they had said booklet telling the “real” story of what happened at Tiananmen Square, how the outsiders had incited the peaceful students to protest, etc. I nearly bought it but couldn’t quite bring myself to hand money to the Chinese government after what had happened.”

Hey baby, that ain’t nothin’ compared to the worship of Chairman Mao. His statues are everywhere and his face is on the money. Despite the fact that this guy was, uh, one bad hombre.

To a person, people here have admiration for Chairman Mao. They wear Mao hats and t-shirts and speak of him with reverence.

Who can appreciate the power of . . . persuasion . . . more than marketers?

Special offer, inspired by my China trip: I’m doing a one-time only seminar in Macao, Asia’s Gambling Capital. This seminar is called “Marketing Secrets of Chairman Mao.” It’s $49,000.00. Non-refundable. It will be staffed by a special “compliance crew” who will physically demonstrate these marketing secrets to you, until you accept their truth. Please email propaganda@perrymarshall.com if you’d like to receive pre-registration materials. ***Comes with special bonus: My new book “Josef Stalin, friend of children and puppy dogs.”

Lest you think today’s message is a bash China session, though, I’d like to show you the other side of the coin. I’ve been quite impressed with China this week.

First of all, yes, China is officially a “Communist country” but make no mistake, it’s the world capital of capitalism. It’s no welfare state, let me tell ya. It’s the most Darwinian place on earth. If it makes money, somebody’s doing it in China.

I was in China in ’04 and several things have dramatically changed since then:

1) We visited the “Drum Tower” in Beijing the other day. Looked over the city. I suddenly noticed the absence of . . . SMOKESTACKS. The last time I was in China, I would have seen twelve of ‘em. If not 20. All belching filth into the sky. In every city you can think of. This time in Beijing, I saw one from the Drum Tower. Just one.

Wow.

Why is that?

It’s the Olympics in 2008. Man did they clean that place up to get ready for it. It might have bankrupted the Greeks but it left China much cleaner. Oh, and yesterday, the day we left Beijing, the sky was as clear as it is in Chicago. Well, almost. It wasn’t smoggy like the day we arrived.

Years ago my buddy Tom Hoobyar predicted: “The Chinese will perfect environmental remediation and then sell it to the world.” Wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be right.

2) I visited a lake, near the “Hutong” historic neighborhood. It didn’t stink! It was lovely. In the past, when you walked past a lake or river, it smelled foul. No more.

3) No litter. In 2004 litter was everywhere. Now it’s gone. Streets are clean.

4) No plastic bags. China used to have these paper thin plastic bags that would blow around and get stuck in everything. Awful. The government banned them. Now you don’t see ‘em anymore.

5) They’re cracking down on piracy. No more pirated CD’s on every street corner.

6) Last time I was in China, EVERYONE smoked, especially the men. Cigarette butts everywhere. Not this time. Not many people smoking and hardly any butts.

I cannot imagine the US doing a 180 on that many fundamental issues in 7 years. It’s probably impossible in a democracy. But when the Chinese government decides to change direction, baby, they lay down the law.

I had a friend whose grandmother lived in Pittsburgh in the 50′s and when he would visit, the place was filthy from steel mills. If you hung white sheets on a clothesline in the back yard, they’d be gray when you brought them in. That was from the soot.

Pittsburgh cleaned up; I hope you know it’s not like that anymore.

China is cleaning up too.

China is growing like crazy. Growing countries have growing pains. You can’t go anywhere without seeing a huge construction crane in the distance. Or maybe 5 of them. They have a rapidly growing middle class. They have way more cars than before, and they’re nicer cars.

So anyway, yeah – we went to Tiananmen square where my boys played hackeysack. Saw a Kung Foo show, which was absolutely amazing. And got rickshaw rides in the Hutong with a really great tour guide who spoke great English. My 11 year old “The Artist” pummeled him with questions about Chinese characters.

You can see some of Laura’s pics at

http://compassionmama.blogspot.com/2011/11/beijing-day-3-hutong-and-tiananmen.html

Yesterday we flew from Beijing to Kunming to Lijiang. That’s sort of like flying from Philadelphia to Denver to Aspen Colorado. But our flight was delayed a few hours and we only had 45 minutes to make a connection.

This wouldn’t have been a problem except that they couldn’t check our bags through so we had to go pick up our bags and re-check them.

A super-helpful woman from the airline took pity on us and moved us to the front of every line. We made it with 3 minutes to spare.

It’s hard to describe how much China has changed in the last 11 years, since the first time I was here. Back then, white people were something of an anomaly. When Bryan first moved here in ’00, people would yell at him as he walked down the street:

HELLO HELLO MARIAH CARY MICHAEL JORDAN! HELLO HELLO!

When I visited, most of the cars were these pitiful little tin cans, or else trucks that looked like tractors, or these big blue diesel monstrosities.

Now you see Toyotas and Buicks and an occasional Mercedes.

Prices here have doubled or tripled in the last 10 years. What used to be a smash buy is now merely a nice bargain. And expensive stuff is the same here as it is in the US. At top rated hotels, a cup of coffee costs 5 bucks – it used to cost 50 cents.

It still costs 50 cents or a buck at the cafe down the street. But the difference is peoples’ willingness and ability to pay. The distance between top and bottom here is huge. The top goes up and up. As Jay Abraham likes to say, “How high is up?”

OK, one last tidbit before I go – and I promise to post some awesome pictures in the next day or two.

Where I am right now in Yunnan, there’s this bizarre fad, which is giving kids IV’s. As in, feeding kids intravenously just for the fun of it. Once in awhile you actually see someone walking down the street next to their kid with an IV. Today I saw an IV store, they sell the supplies. Just like a pharmacy.

It’s not cuz the kids need it. It’s because they think it’s good for ‘em. Sort of like vitamins or something.

Hideous but true.

I wonder what WE do that THEY think is totally insane?

More to come soon-

Perry

First Day in Beijing

We boarded the plane a couple of days ago. My youngest, “Z-Man” who’s 7 years old, was so excited, every 30 minutes he’d get out of his seat with mom, walk up the aisle to my seat and say, “Dad, how long before we get to China?”

“Only 11 hours and 45 minutes.”

(It was a 13 hour flight. One of the things I love about living Chicago is, it’s easy to get to anywhere. And not just Cleveland.)

Our oldest, the one we affectionately call The Drama Queen, stayed home with our neighbors ‘cuz she’s in high school. But the three boys came with us. Bryan’s meeting up with us tomorrow in Lijiang.

Meanwhile here we are in the capital of China.

Beijing is a great place but before I get into all the fun stuff, I gotta get something off my chest.

The plane landed. It was 4pm, just starting to get dark. Beijing is a lot like Chicago – same weather etc. The sun was going down.

Laura looks out the window at the murky orange ball in the sky and says to me, “Is that smog?”

“Yeah baby, that’s smog.”

She had this look of mild shock.

It’s not like I hadn’t told her about the pollution in China. Nine years ago I was here, taking some factory tours. The smog in Shanghai was horrible, far worse than anything you’d see in LA. The sky was not blue, it was a murky yellow haze.

But the kicker is, I took a six hour cab ride from Shanghai to Dongyang – which would be roughly like going from Washington DC to the middle of Virginia – and as I went far into the countryside, the smog didn’t change one iota.

Imagine driving through farms in central Virginia and seeing the sky choked with smog.

That’s the entire east coast of China for ya.

I said to myself: “If I wasn’t an environmentalist before, I sure am now.”

This is why I fail to understand why everyone’s arguing about global warming. Why fight about problems you can’t see – like temperatures – while nobody’s talking about the problems you can see, problems so obvious they’re shocking?

Laura had probably heard my China pollution story ten times. But nothing had prepared her for actually seeing it for herself. At night in Beijing, there’s smoggy haze around every street light. This is a picture of the Beijing airport, and the glow around the street lights is smog:

If you want to solve environmental problems, you don’t start with greenhouse gases. You start with coal furnaces belching visible filth and well-known toxins into the sky.

Personally I think witch hunts going after invisible problems are really just ways of distracting people from the obvious problems. Human nature usually favors the imaginary problems over the obvious. I say, always begin with the obvious problem.

Keep in mind that the US outsources a lot of its pollution to China, so this is everyone’s issue, not just theirs.

When you watch Chinese TV, the commercials almost always include a brilliant blue sky with lush green grass. That’s because the average Chinese person rarely sees either blue sky or green grass. The China newspapers have a city by city pollution index that they publish every week.

Like I said, if I wasn’t an environmentalist before, I sure am now.

And if anyone ever tells you our environmental problems are all fabricated, stick ‘em on the next flight to Beijing or Shanghai and that’ll shut ‘em up permanently.

EndRant.

We checked into our hotel and went outside looking for a restaurant. We ended up going to street stalls (Laura and I were feeling more adventurous than the boys were). Number One Son who’s 13 liked the chicken and I got a bowl of noodles. The younger boys, well let’s just say this was a bit much for them.

Next morning we took a walk around Beijing. It wasn’t long before we walked by this art shop and the proprietor started talking to us about how many kids we had. To Chinese people, three kids is almost incomprehensible. He didn’t know we had four and were about to get a fifth. Not until the kids told him, anyway.

Man was this guy a good schmoozer. Number One Son chuckled as he worked his magic. “What is your name? Marshall? Ah, I show you what Marshall means in Chinese. Ma, that means horse. Shall, that means “Beautiful.” See, this mean “Beautiful horse.” Your family have strength and leadership. Very admirable qualities.

“Beautiful horse means courage and bravery. Ancient Chinese emperors prize these things, give you great honor. You must be very proud.”

Of course it’s hard to tell how badly he’s mangling Chinese syllables in order to come up with this stuff, but I tellya, this was great salesmanship. Number One Son is laughing his butt off. The proprietor says, “For 50 Yuan I draw “Marshall” for you in special Chinese calligraphy and you hang on your wall, yes?”

Number One Son, who has acquired his cynicism from his father, the advertising professional, can’t stop laughing. I say to him, “You learn to sell like this guy can sell, you will never go hungry.”

The guy did manage to levitate some dinero out of our wallets before we escaped from his store. Gotta hand it to him.

Next, the Forbidden City. As soon as you get there you get accosted by tour guides. The US travel service screwed up when they set us up with one so we were on our own. I hate being accosted by sales people but Laura reminds me that if I don’t talk to them we won’t get a tour.

So I negotiate a tour of the Forbidden City, along with a trip to the Great Wall of China, all for one package price. The lady takes us around, shows us everything. We even get to meet the nephew of the “Last Emperor” Pu Yi, who apparently is a famous calligrapher.

I’d been to China three times before – 2001, 2002 and 2004. I was shocked at how much prices had gone up. A cup of tea at the Forbidden City cost 3 bucks. Last time I was hear it would have cost 75 cents and in some places would have cost 30 cents. China USED to be so cheap you felt like you were stealing.

Beijing has modernized FAST. It is fully a first world, world-class city. I suspect other parts of China are less developed but you’ll hear about those in due time. We’ve got 4+ more cities before we’re done.

Our tour guide took us to the Great Wall, stopping at a “Jade” store on the way. They sold everything you could possibly imagine, carved out of jade.

The boys LOVED the great wall. We walked almost all the way to the top of that particular section, which felt like climbing all the way to the top of the Sears Tower. The weather was good and we got some ice cream when we got to the bottom.

You can see Laura’s pics of the Forbidden City and the Great Wall here:

http://compassionmama.blogspot.com/2011/11/beijing-day-2-forbidden-city-and-great.html

On the way back the driver took us to a Silk store. It was becoming apparent that these guys get kickbacks for adding extra destinations to your “tour.” Then he announced we were going to go to another special place and observe a tea ceremony.

Laura and the kids were exhausted. They didn’t want to go anywhere else. I told the guy I wanted to go to our hotel and skip the tea ceremony.

The tour guide replied that we have to go to the tea ceremony.

I said no, we want to go home.

He says to me, “No, must take you there, otherwise they take away my pay or end my job. Please sir, it only take 20 minutes.”

“Can I talk to your boss?”

“He doesn’t speak English and I don’t know his cell phone number.”

We’re kinda trapped.

We ride for awhile. Finally I say, “I want you to call your boss right now and find out how much the kickback is for the tea ceremony. I’ll pay you the money. But I do NOT want to go to the tea ceremony and you did not tell me I had to go to the tea ceremony when we started this trip. That’s dishonest.”

He calls his boss and tells me it costs 200 Yuan ($30) to not go to the tea ceremony. We pay him the thirty bucks and he drives us back to our hotel.

Welcome to China!

We had dinner across the street from the hotel. On the way back from the hotel, I saw a sign that said, “Foot massage soup.” Oh I just love Chenglish. Apparently they dunk your feet in some magic potion and massage your feet.

I decided to go get a massage. I took the back massage too.

So this guy starts working on my feet and back. Then he brings these glass jars and puts them on my back. It makes this painful pinching sensation. He insists that this is very very good for my back. He leaves the jars on my back for several minutes. This is NOT comfortable. However Chinese massage usually isn’t and I figure they know what they’re doing.

I get back to my hotel room and the kids say, “What happened to your back????” I look in the mirror and it looks like I have huge slices of salami stuck to my back. Giant bruises from “cupping therapy.”

Dang, this is hideous!

The massage guy had told me not to get my back wet, to wait until tomorrow night before showering.

Ummm…. okay. Chinese people sure have strange ideas about health. Laura said, “You look like you got attacked by an octopus.”

Three cheers for my giant red welts!

At least they don’t hurt. I will report back to you about whether I was permanently maimed by my trip to the Chinese massage guy.

Today we go to the Hutong (“traditional historic neighborhood”) and Tiananmen Square, the famous place where the Chinese student had a standoff with a tank in 1989. (This, by the way, is not what most Chinese people associate the place with. In China, Chairman Mao, who killed more people than anyone else in history, is considered a hero. But I digress)

And probably we’ll catch some Samaurai show. The kids oughtta like that.

Tomorrow I and my wife and three kids and my eight welts fly to Lijiang, the most beautiful city in Asia. We meet up with Bryan there. Stay tuned…..

Perry Marshall

Adoption story starts Saturday – follow me to China!

My four kids are getting a new little sister! This Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving, the Marshall family thundering herd is gettin’ on a plane and heading to China. We’re going to get our adopted daughter.

She lives at an orphanage in the Jianxi province in Southeast China. She’s one and a half.

If you want our travel updates, pictures and stories, just enter your email below and I’ll add you to my update list.

You’ll get an inside view of my fam, plus a few scenic spots like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and pics of the most beautiful city in all of Asia, Lijiang.

You might even hear a thing or two about my 4-Man Intensive in Hong Kong, which is December 16-17.

To get our updates, fill out the form:

(Then I’ll take you to Zoe’s pictures on Laura’s blog.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Perry Marshall

Deadline Today + Peek into the Future of Facebook

Today at noon Central Time, our shopping cart for Facebook Firestorm closes. If you want to make Facebook an effective source of leads, I know of no other place that will better equip you:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/firestorm/

“Cost Per Thousand Impressions” (CPM) is  the most basic way to judge the value of web traffic. In the United States, impressions on Google’s Display Network, targeted at audiences known to spend money, costs roughly two bucks a thousand.

Actual numbers vary wildly, but $2 CPM is a decent average price of quality traffic.

Typical Facebook traffic costs 1/10th that much. $0.20 CPM. CHEAP.

Why so cheap?

Because most people don’t know how to connect peoples’ likes and interests to what they’ll actually buy and Facebook’s tools aren’t all that good. (This is why we developed Fanalytix™.)

But here’s a view to the future. Great article on Mashable about how Facebook tracks its users:

http://mashable.com/2011/11/17/facebook-reveals-its-user-tracking-secrets/

All those “Like” buttons all over the web give Facebook the ability to connect the dots and understand exactly what people are “into” regardless of what they type into their profile. You don’t even have to click the “like” buttons. Facebook still knows you’re there.

Facebook, if they wanted to, could sell you very high quality, laser targeted traffic.

My personal belief is that Facebook is conflicted about this. I think they have meetings where people argue and throw chairs at each other. Half see huge profit potential and the other half are terrified of the Privacy Police.

The fact that they commit major public gaffes every six months by flagrantly violating peoples’ privacy, inviting government scrutiny, only exacerbates the problems.

So here’s what’s going to happen in the next couple of years.

Our friends in Washington DC will pass mostly useless legislation about this or that. And eventually Facebook will go public and the 23 year old kids at Facebook will have to actually earn their own bread instead of having venture capital waved in their faces.

Meanwhile, RIGHT NOW IS THE GOLDEN AGE / WILD WEST ERA OF FACEBOOK ADVERTISING.

Everybody has glowing memories about the wild west after it’s conquered. Everyone has romantic stories about the free 160 acres they received. They kind of forget about all the people who starved to death and came back with arrows in their backs.

Everyone remembers 2003 as the golden age of Google clicks and forgets that back then you could barely get your computer to run an hour without crashing.

The present time is ALWAYS a golden age of *something.*

Whatever hand you’re dealt, take advantage of it. And don’t wait, because you usually don’t know what the “something” is until it’s too late. I’m telling you what it is now – so sleep with one eye open and devil take the hindmost.

Perry Marshall

Facebook Firestorm registration closes today:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/firestorm/

Facebook Firestorm starts today. Why it matters.

When Google introduced AdWords in 2002, people started making money with it immediately. Yet almost nobody’s making money from social media. Allow me to explain why.

When people search Google, they’re hoping to make a decision.

When people log onto Facebook they’re trying to AVOID making a decision.

Facebook users are paddling in the opposite direction of Google searchers. So if you don’t have a mechanism for turning them around 180 degrees – for converting the DIS-advantages of social media to your advantage . . .

. . . you’re screwed.

On the other hand, if your sales funnel is built to accept Facebook traffic and perform that 180, there’s a LOT of traffic to be had. A LOT. One of our Facebook Firestorm students (who insists on anonymity) has made 100 million dollars.

There is a LOT of traffic on Facebook.

So we built a platform called Fanalytix™ which harnesses the rich knowledge that Facebook affords and converts it into actionable information. It’s so powerful that almost anybody – even with an IsFBforMe score of 3 – can boost their marketing by 10%. Even if you never spend a dime on Facebook ads.

We’re teaching Fanalytix™ in Facebook Firestorm 2. It starts at 1pm ET today:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/facebook/firestorm/

Get in on our live Q&A session at 11am ET:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/facebook/training/

Tom Meloche knows things about Facebook advertising that nobody else knows. He’ll teach ya. Do not miss out.

Perry Marshall

http://www.perrymarshall.com/facebook/firestorm/

A Tootsie Pop for your customer’s inner child AND inner bean counter

Every great B2B offer you make should be a Tootsie Pop:

*A sugar-coated emotional candy treat on the outside, and . . .

*A proposition on the inside that logical, hard-nosed business person can chew on.

Back in my Pink Koolaid days there was a guy named Jerry. I always made sure to see Jerry’s presentations every time he was in town, cuz I learned so much by watching him. He would alternate from logic to emotion to logic, back and forth, back and forth. Through this he held an almost hypnotic power over his audience.

This morning I talked to a guy who sells expensive, exotic cutting tools. His stuff has diamond tips and space-age technology. It’s 3-4X more costly than the ‘standard fare’ you buy at Home Depot.

I told him he needs to come right out and say why you’d wanna pay him $70 instead of giving the other guy $20.

“You need to present your customer with a 100% logical, rational argument that will make his bean counter happy. Show him that your tools stay sharper and cut more material and take less time. Prove that they last longer and save his shop money.”

And . . . everyone secretly desires to justify buying the deluxe version instead of the regular one.

“You also need to make the kid inside, his inner craftsman, happy too. Show him the pleasure of effortlessly feeding that material through the machine, sliding your hand along that freshly cut wood and sensing how smooth it feels to your touch.”

I’ve just finished re-inventing our Business-to-Business lead generation system and it’s all about those two things: ATTRACTING attention with emotionally compelling offers, and KEEPING attention with enduring value and unbeatable propositions.

If you sell to other businesses and you need to generate more leads, take a look:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/guerrilla-marketing/high-tech-sales/

Perry Marshall

The entrepreneurs nobody knows how to kill

Did your mother ever say this to you?

“Bundle up today, it’s cold outside and if you’re not careful you’ll come down with something.”

You go outside and sure enough, the next day you feel that dreaded sensation. “Ooof, I am definitely coming down with something.”

That’s what we talked about during lunch yesterday at the 4-Man, at my dining room table. I said, “So do you guys know what’s actually going on when you’re ‘coming down with something’?”

“You come down with strep throat or something and you think you caught it while you were outside. Actually what happened was, those bacteria were quietly multiplying for weeks. They were having conversations with each other – ‘Hey guys, is there enough of us yet?’

‘Not quite . . . not quite . . . hey, he just went outside and he’s freezing cold and he’s spending all his energy staying warm. ATTACK NOW!’

And they all go to work, little soldiers marching into battle. They work together. Scientists call it “quorum sensing.” Bacteria talk to each other. Different species even speak different dialects.

OK, so now you take antibiotics to kill the germs. Everybody knows you gotta be careful with antibiotics cuz germs develop resistance and then you can’t kill ‘em anymore.

I say to everyone, “Has anyone ever explained to you how the germs develop resistance?”

Nobody’s heard this either.

“There’s a germ floating around in your body. It says, ‘This poison is leaking into my cell wall and it’s killing me. I’ve gotta find a pump to pump this out or I’m gonna die.’

That germ goes around your system hunting for another cell that has a pump. Cells have a file folder called a plasmid. It has a public copy of their DNA.

Your germ finds a cell that has a pump, it grabs its DNA from the file folder and reads it.

It finds the part of the DNA that codes for a pump and inserts that DNA into its own DNA. It builds a pump and starts birthing new germs that have pumps. That’s how smart those little guys are and it’s why germs keep getting smarter. Bulletproof bacteria.”

Ronak, the guy sitting next to me says, “OK, so the best germs are the entrepreneur bacteria that go around looking for the best ideas, and they’re the ones that survive, right?”

“Right on, baby,” I say. “Germs go out and conquer the same way we do. By getting the best ideas they can find and implementing them.”

Another guy at the table, Drew, says, “Well I guess that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?”

When seasoned business people get together and share their entire collective experience, power happens. It turns ordinary entrepreneurs into bulletproof superbugs. They create viruses that nobody knows how to kill.

How would you ever kill Ebay? Or Starbucks? Or Google? How hard would it be to take out *anybody* who regularly seeks out the sharpest people in the world, and learns from them?

In history you have different eras – the Renaissance, the major world wars, the “60′s”, the digital age and so on. The world is in a major transition right now. We’re transitioning from the era we’re in now (we won’t even have a name for it until 20 years from now) to a brand new era.

This is a massive reset.

It means that only half of what you think is true actually is. And that’s being generous.

The agile and well equipped will prosper. Everyone else – the also-rans– will be working for the agile ones in 10 years.

Which one will you be?

Will you be one of those bulletproof bacteria, a superbug that nobody knows how to kill? Or will you be a carcass?

You get to decide. And if you’re not in a killer mastermind group, a place where you can borrow pumps and DNA code and other peoples’ lethal weapons, you’ve already decided.

Perry Marshall
http://www.perrymarshall.com/roundtable/

Who likes Planet Perry & who doesn’t

There’s a vast initiation ritual, akin to fraternity hazing, in which entrepreneur wannabe’s are stripped of their wallets and ID’s and forced to drink pints of vodka while spinning on merry-go-rounds. They’re fed sandwiches made of spam and fantasy lunch meat, and stripped of their self-respect and self-confidence one dollar at a time, before finally being released to re-learn everything they thought they knew in the school of hard knocks.

The name of this ritual is “Business Opportunity.” Marketing insiders refer to it as “Bizop.” A multi-billion dollar industry.

Perpetrators of this scheme rationalize it this way: “Somebody’s going to separate all those cattle from their money, it might as well be me.”

(I’ve heard all kinds of variations of exactly that.)

Citizens of Planet Perry, almost to a person, are folks who’ve somehow managed to survive all this with their sanity and marriages intact, and who are finally ready to learn how business REALLY works.

Did you know that in copywriting, “WORK” is a four letter word? “LEARN” is a four-letter too. I probably shouldn’t have used it.

The word “learn” is only appealing to people who’ve finished drinking the pink koolaid, vomited up the poison, recovered from their near-death experience, mopped the puke off floor and decided there’s still got to be a way to make a business successful. They’re now prepared to find out what it is.

People who are NOT ready for a real business are enamored with words like these:

turn-key
just follow the system
magic
amazing
unbelievable
riches
4-hour work week
ease
minimal investment
porn

People who’ve made the switch are much more interested in words like these:

implementation
elegance
insight
contribution
value
uniqueness
meaning
skills
equity
action
relationships

When you’re finally sick and tired of blowing $2000 on courses that are purported to spit $100 bills onto your living room floor like a magic ATM machine, “with just a few simple steps” . . .

. . . when you accept that work is a joy and a calling and not something to be avoided . . .

That’s when the real discovery starts.

My “Four hour work week” reference isn’t a dig at Tim Ferris, by the way. Tim works 100 hours a week :^> Leading by example, I tell ya. The title of the book simply reflects the fantasy that book buyers prefer to buy into.

To all those who’ve made the switch and are still in the game, welcome. This is where the adventure begins.

Perry Marshall

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