The less-traveled road to mastery
Last month I went to “Fantasy Drum Camp” in Cleveland. A drummer’s dream. 14 hours a day of nothing but music and learning with the best guys in rock and jazz.
Chris Coleman, who’s played with Prince, Chaka Khan and New Kids on the Block, gave the most valuable piece of advice of all.
He says, “Let’s say there’s this really amazing song you want to play. You can spend 3 months practicing it, and at the end of 3 months you still sound lousy.”
He handed us a chart of very basic rhythms and patterns, where you mix and match them any way you want. He said, “Or you could spend the next 3 months playing every different combination of these very simple patterns. Then you can learn that hard song in 2 days and you’ll sound GREAT.”
CLICK. AHA. I GET IT! Master the simple stuff. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200, until you get this one sheet of paper right.
THEN you can travel ’round the Monopoly board as fast as you want, you can pass GO 100 times if you want and collect $200 as often as you want.
This is not complicated. It’s actually simple!
Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree complained that in the 21st century, musicians have too many inputs, too many things to listen to, too many YouTube videos, too many ideas, too many gurus. So they just bounce around from one thing to another and never get around to NAILING the fundamentals.
Does that, um, sound familiar???
This problem is precisely what Bobsled Run is designed to solve. Traffic+Conversion+Economics 101. Exclusive focus. Total mastery of the basics in 3 months. Which enables you to build profitable businesses AT WILL.
It’s why people take Bobsled 2, 3, 4 times and go on to create empires.
My advice to you:
Unsubscribe from 10 other email lists that bombard you with shiny metal objects and visions of sugar plums and bells and whistles and promises of easy riches. Pay the $100 app fee, sign up for Bobsled and get the IMPORTANT stuff under your belt for good.
http://www.bobsledrun.com
You’ll not regret it.
Perry Marshall
The Secret Power of “Amateurs”
When I was 13 my mom bought me a subscription to an obscure magazine, “Audio Amateur.” It was for people who like to build stereo equipment.
The editor, Ed Dell, would always point out that the old-school definition “Amateur” was – someone who does something for the LOVE of it, not for the money. Not to be confused with the more recent connotation which is “a part-timer who does sloppy work.”
The sales pitch for the magazine pointed out that your “dream stereo system” may only be possible if you build it yourself – because it’s not subject to the compromises of commercial systems.
It’s true, and if you’re ever a guest at my home, you can hear the speakers that I designed :^>
Funny thing – almost everything I’ve ever been really ‘into’ has been an “Amateur” sport. Something people do for the love of it.
And the strange thing about entrepreneurs is —- yeah, they do it for the money, but they almost always do it for the money SECOND, not first.
Their first priority is simply the freedom of doing what they love. Not having the man’s boot on their neck.
Ed Dell is right – people who do it for love, in the long run, are badass competitors. Take a bunch of corporate guys who learned Pay Per Click on somebody else’s dime, match ‘em up against “Amateurs” who learned on their own dime, and I guarantee you the “Amateurs” are gonna clean up 95% of the time.
And if you can live with the occasional stigma of a guy in a shiny new car who laughs at your Rusty Yellow School Bus with a 4 Million Dollar Engine, you can show ‘em tail lights night after night.
Perry Marshall
AdWords Training in Bracknell, Reading, Slough, Basingstoke, Fleet, Windsor, Newbury, Swindon and Oxford, UK
New York, London, Maui – Bracknell?
Why AdWords Training Masterclasses in – Bracknell? (and the Thames Valley, Berkshire).
I've been working with AdWords since 2005, and yet even today I never stop getting surprising new insights from it based on all sorts of things I see in client accounts (this week for example – we deleted keywords from a client campaign, and impressions and clicks *rose* steeply while CPC fell – huh? Perhaps Hal Varian is right after all …)
And of course Google continually sneak new things out without even telling us …
I've been training AdWords clients on and off since 2007, but usually remotely over a period of weeks (my corporate background also has quite a bit of training preparation and delivery in it).
In late 2009 I started working very intensively with a client for who the AdWords Conversion Optimizer seemed a good fit.
The results were truly startling and gave me a profound (and probably unique at that time, outside of Google themselves) insight into what lay under the hood of the system which so many of us had been working with, and believed we understood, since 2003 or so.
As I tested new things, and deliberately broke all the rules to see what would happen, I made strange new discoveries that defied all the logic and best practices we had evolved up to that point in time.
But they also answered many questions and dispelled many myths (why do all new campaigns default to all networks? and what's the best way to set ad rotation?)
By then I had attended several System Seminars in Chicago and had established relationships with some of our top Industry publishers, so I started sharing my findings with my good friend Bryan Todd at Perry Marshall and Associates.
As I got more data, they became increasingly interested in having me share it at their first upcoming AdWords Elite Masters Summit on Maui, (April 2010).
When I mentioned it to Ken McCarthy, he invited me to share it at the System Seminar Chicago 2010, and then so did Howie Jacobson at Camp Checkmate too.
I'd never stood up and presented to hundreds of people before (not since I gave my Groom Wedding Speech anyway in 1996!) so it was pretty terrifying – but hugely rewarding.
Since then (and attending Maui 2, and System New York 2011) I've come to realise that what gives me the greatest satisfaction is being able to share my experience with others.
So starting off in my local area which is easily reachable, I have decided to see if anyone might be interested in what I have to share, and believe me I can talk for *hours* about this stuff, it's just so fascinating.
If you'd like to join me at my home office, or a local conference center, I am now offering AdWords Training in Bracknell, Reading, Slough, Basingstoke, Fleet, Windsor, Newbury, Swindon and Oxford, UK.
What you learn could transform your AdWords campaigns …
You’ve Gotta See This Graphic
Who really runs the show on the Internet? Google? Facebook? Twitter? All the webmasters of the world?
Check this out:
Emails outnumber Facebook posts, tweets, Google searches and Internet page views by a factor of FOUR. Even after you exclude spam.
Email is the absolute center of the Internet universe. You have to have an email address to sign up for Twitter, Facebook, or any of Google’s services. There is no indication this will change any time soon.
This is why I’ve always said, my own real secret isn’t Google AdWords, it’s my ability to use email. To gain access to someone’s inner sanctum (that’s what email is, really) and be a welcome guest.
I contend that THIS is the most profitable single skill you can master as an online marketer. The simple, lowly medium of Email.
This is why in our fabled Bobsled Run, we devote an entire extended segment to email marketing and autoresponders. Because email is enormously influential and it’s ruthlessly competitive. You want your customers to look forward to hearing from you.
What would it be like if you could connect to people emotionally and persuasively and have permission to show up any time you have something important to say?
That’s far more powerful than anything you can do with Pay Per Click, SEO or Social Media. Email traffic is the highest quality traffic that exists, because it’s built on relationship.
100 email addresses is far more valuable than 1,000 Facebook fans.
Think of email as a thin thread that gets thicker and more robust with time, solidifying your connection to other human beings around the world, enabling you to summon an army of allies on command.
Think of email as a garden that you weed and water until it’s lush with flowers and trees and green and every kind of color. A tool to be used with skill and precision.
It’s kind of hard to “hype” email, unless you’re talking to a really naive person. Yet email has the power to move the world.
Master the simplest thing and the world is yours.
Perry Marshall
P.S. Thanks to Rob Sieracki of Rocket Clicks for bringing this graphic to my attention. Graphic courtesy www.ReadWriteWeb.com
You can’t achieve mastery with 15 different teachers
In the HyperEvolution course I was helping a student re-invent his construction company. He came to 4-Man Intensive the other day and he had a new landing page that was, well, just kind of weird.
He’d listened to a presentation from someone else and liked it. He received a very specific idea and he’d run with it. But it didn’t fit.
God bless the guy, he was trying really hard and best of all he was DOING SOMETHING! But his message had become a mishmash of various peoples’ approaches and it wasn’t congruent.
We backed up and fixed it. And I told him: “Do not vary from my instructions. Do it this way and test my approach. Then if it doesn’t work we’ll come up with something else.”
When you’re a ninja, you can wisely pick and choose between all sorts of different approaches and assemble them in your own special way, however you like. It’s jazz improvisation and it’s thrilling.
But a 5th grader just learning the saxophone can’t even begin to do jazz improvisation. When you’re furiously trying to achieve your first wins, it doesn’t work. You end up feeling – and sounding – schizophrenic.
It’s profoundly frustrating, too, because it SEEMS like you are very knowledgable. It FEELS as though you should be hitting home runs right and left.
But you’re spinning your wheels and sinking deeper in debt and it feels like a horrible tantalizing nightmare. Eventually it starts to seem like the whole marketing world is a big giant conspiracy to vacuum out your wallet, yank the needle out of your arm and shove your hospital bed out into the parking lot as soon as your insurance runs out.
If you relate to this, here’s my advice to you:
UNSUBSCRIBE from two thirds or three fourths of the emails. Right now. De-clutter your life and your brain. Now.
The WORST way you can learn marketing is subscribe to 25 different emails and skim as much free stuff from as many people as possible.
The BEST way to master marketing is to pick one – certainly no more than two or three people whose approaches are highly complementary – and buy their best materials. NARROW your focus, make yourself a student and devote yourself to ONE path.
As for the rest . . . unsubscribe, baby. It’ll solve the #1 complaint I hear from people: “T-o-o m-u-c-h i-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-i-o-n!”
If that offends you or you think I’m being self-serving by saying that. . . . feel free to unsubscribe. There’s no law in the universe that says Perry Marshall has to be your Man.
But this is exactly how I did it and still do it. My mentors are not many. You’d be amazed at how FEW people I pay any attention to at all. And regardless of what you think of me, you can write this in blood:
You *cannot* master marketing or anything else by treating it like a giant pick-and-choose buffet.
You need to learn to think like ONE person that you can relate to, to the point where that person becomes your alter-ego. You burn their moves into your muscle memory. Eventually you know *exactly* how they would handle almost any situation. That’s how true mentoring works.
That, by the way, never happens when you take the cheap route and just skim the free stuff. You only achieve mastery when you pick a single path and GO DEEP.
Perry Marshall
www.BobsledRun.com
594 words
Reading Level: Age 11
test page
Tipping Point: Customers Choose You. 3pm EST today.
Last week Sam, my music teacher, came over. He just graduated with a Master’s degree in jazz and he’s looking for work. He was frustrated because doors kept slamming and thought I might be able to help.
We sit down and convo awhile. I dig into his USP. Turns out he has one. (Most people do, but they don’t know it.) Inevitably, the question comes: “Sam, how can you PROVE – to a music department or anybody else – that you really do have a badass USP and you can deliver the goods?”
Hint: A resume and cover letter won’t do it.
The answer is, he needs a pile of physical “proof,” along with a little bit of celebrity. Not a lot, mind you, but just enough to demonstrate he’s not just another college grad. Tipping point.
I gave him my new Celebrity Expert Formula book and a homework assignment. This morning he sent me an email with USP’s, niches and product ideas. His head’s already in a completely different space. I predict in 3 months he’ll be living a new life.
This afternoon at 3pm Eastern, I’ll tell you more of Sam’s story and outline my Celebrity Expert formula. You’ll discover how other people are doing this in all kinds of different fields. I’m kicking off a short-run, affordable training program starting tomorrow and today’s webinar is a preview.
Get webinar login details:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/influence/
Tomorrow’s training starts at 3pm Eastern September 7. Register here:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/celebrity/
Perry Marshall
P.S.: 10 years ago it would have been highly unusual for an employee of any company to have an external “personality presence” – i.e. a blog, a speaking platform, or their own products. Now this exact thing has become THE deciding factor in selling yourself to the world. Whether as a freelancer or as part of a larger company.
Picture the college professor whose blog has 10,000 readers. The other guys in his department don’t do that, but he does. He gets to write his own ticket. You can too.
Rainmaker Speaks
Wayne Moritz, a software engineer from Clearwater Florida, posted this comment on my blog. I think it’s a gem:
What Perry teaches is a rapidly evolving process and if you want to play there you have to pay your dues in an ongoing basis. What you master today may be the cold ticket next month.
I have been in the software business since the mid 70′s and i work 3000-4000 hours per year to be tops in my game. I can go anywhere and name my deal. My friends when they lose their job will never find another one because the feeling of entitlement or having already paid their dues years ago is stuck in their heads. They are like an athlete that makes the team and stops working out once the contract is signed. What they don’t realize is the job just got started once you make the team.
I could easily pluck their 90k government jobs and replace them with a 30k person as the skills vs what they do are no longer worth 90k plus benefits and they add zero value beyond showing up and pushing buttons. These guys have not picked up a book or improved their skills unless the employer has paid for it. They have wasted endless weeknights and weekends watching last place teams play sports though. They do sometimes ask me to give them shortcuts because they don’t want to do the work.
I picked up Perry’s Google Adwords, other courses, news letters and more a few years ago and yes they piled up and sat here. I am not a web guy but an offline guy that solves complex business issues for multi-national corporations.
I had a new prospect call and need my help with ad-words and i thought now is the time. I wanted to learn it but now i had a paying client letting me loose on their dime. I went to work probably 120 hours per week for 6 weeks, poured over Perry’s materials, bought analysis tools (looking inside competition) and kept at it until i had a working model that I felt great about. I took them live and and generated a profit from month 1. Now we are in our 4th month and they are generating 35-50k in monthly revenue and i get a piece of each deal as these are 1k-3k professional services transactions. We expect revenues to be 50-100k+ in 2012 per month as i introduce more landing pages and refine my selection process and negative keywords.
I am using all that i have learned for my own companies and others I choose to work with. I do filter down to ones where i can make at a minimum 2k+ per month or I don’t get involved. I have a list of companies wanting help and it’s funny as i know in minutes which ones will work and which ones i walk from. The minute they tell me they want page 1 Free Google I hit the door as these are the people that want something ongoing for nothing. They are doomed to failure long term because their greed far exceeds their common sense.
Too many people mix up Activity for Accomplishments. My friends are active but never accomplish anything because they show up, push the buttons and go home with their checks. They never take the time to learn or ask questions or improve themselves.
My point here is you need to do the work or hire a mentor that can help you which means it takes effort and money to make money. The guys that brought me in were not afraid to pay all the ad-words costs and pay me a percentage off the gross deposits in the bank each month. I was firm saying i have 36 years experience offline and i can move my drive and ambition online with the proper tools and training quickly.
Now everybody wins.
It’s easier to get clients when they see your face on a magazine cover.
I’ve noticed that my customers tend to be very, very good at what they do. Not every guru’s customers are like that. A lot of folks are about gaming the system for a quick buck. As you well know. 
If you’re for real – if your products are top-notch and you’re NOT about ‘gaming the system’ – then you owe it to the world to learn how to position yourself properly. The world needs to do business with you, not the flim-flam men. If you’re badly positioned, they won’t know the difference and everybody loses.
This month my mug is on the cover of Internet Marketing Magazine. Nice ego boost. My wife showed it to some of her friends yesterday and they were impressed.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “That’s nice for you Perry, but that does nothing for me.”
Well it does do something for you. It proves I can teach you a thing or two how to position yourself. And if there’s anything I could tell you about publicity, authority and celebrity, it’s this:
EVEN A LITTLE TINY BIT OF EXPERT STATUS IS A HUGE ADVANTAGE.
Huge.
The very LEAST it can do for you is take you straight to the top of a stack of resumes on some hiring manager’s desk. You WILL get an interview. Even if it’s just for a regular J-O-B. I gave this same piece of advice just this week, to a friend who wants to be a college professor: “Get yourself some street cred.”
A modest amount of expert status gives you the ability to charge 50% more than everybody else, whether you’re an author, speaker, consultant or knowledge worker.
A lot of expert status gives you the ability to charge 300% more than everybody else. For the same skills.
It is THE defining difference between an ordinary career and an extraordinary one.
I’ve released a new book called “The Celebrity Expert Formula” and I’m delivering it in combination with a series of paid webinars.
You can get in for 99 bucks. In my opinion this is a steal. You should sign up even if you can’t listen in live. Just get the MP3′s/videos and read the book.
I could just as easily have charged $990 for it. I decided to sell it at a price that Perry the Dilbert Cube Occupant in 2001 could have afforded. This would have enabled me to do what I did then, far better and faster.
If you’re a consultant, this is mandatory.
http://www.perrymarshall.com/celebrity/
Perry
P.S.: Publicity is very, very perishable. But the ability to brag about it lasts for years. This here magazine cover is a big asset and I’ll be using it for a long, long time. What are YOU doing to get an asset like this? What would this kind of asset do for YOUR business?
What kind of car does Perry drive?
In 2008 I sent out this postcard:
You had to go to the website to find out the answer. The answer was….
A 2001 Toyota Avalon. Kinda funny considering somebody out there is gonna assume I’m driving a Bugatti.
Why would an “internet guru” be driving 7 year old car with 107,000 miles? I’ll tell you why….
- I wouldn’t even think of buying a car brand new off the lot. I’ll let somebody else soak up the depreciation, thank you very much
- An Avalon is pretty close to a Lexus, minus the snob appeal
- It’s quiet, very comfortable, better gas mileage than a SUV, super reliable
- Has a great JBL stereo system (that’s what sold me in the end)
I went on to explain that how I choose a car is exactly the same as how I teach you to buy clicks on Google: With basic old-fashioned common sense, a certain amount of thrift, and as little vanity as humanly possible.
What I didn’t explain was how many other cars I’ve driven nearly into the ground! I bet I’ve driven three or four of ‘em past 200,000 miles, then sold them to some guy for six hundred bucks, rust and all.
Our previous minivan was a purple Honda Odyssey. It was 5 years old with 70K miles when I bought it for $13,000 cash. That was six months after I escaped from the Dilbert Cube. 2 years ago we sold it to a junkyard for $150. Bought MamaLaura a red Toyota Sienna.
And now I STILL have my 2001 Avalon. It’s 10 years old, it’s got 136,000 miles, and it’s got a few more dents and dings. Last week I was driving some clients to dinner during the 4-Man Intensive and one guy is sitting in the back seat. He says to me, “Perry, you live an austere lifestyle.”
Later that night we’re backing out of a parking garage. I scrape the front door against a cement post, busting the mirror and making a huge dent.
MamaLaura says to me, “Perry, you do NOT live an austere lifestyle . . . but my dear husband, it’s time for you to get a newer car.”
I had to agree. Yeah, I can’t keep driving cars into the ground. A guy like me ought to drive a respectable vehicle.
Yesterday I rented a new Avalon from a dealer. Cheap way to find out if I really like it without having a car salesman riding around with me. Verdict’s in: It’s SWEET. But it’s not the only car in the world and I’m not gonna buy a brand new 2011.
So…. I’m interested in your opinion. What kind of car do YOU think I should drive?
I’ll consider every one of your comments before I buy.
Oh yeah, and one other thing. I’m going to start naming my cars. Matt Gillogly has Klaus the Volvo and Betsy the Honda mini van. The winning suggestion gets to name my next car. Plus I promise to talk about it in emails and newsletters every now and then . . .
Perry
