I have friends who are on 47 different marketing email lists. They know what everybody out there in marketing-land is doing, and if I want to know, all I have to do is ask ’em.
A couple of those guys are really successful, and I don’t knock anything that works for people. However even the ones with the radar cranked up the highest still actually only take advice from a small handful of people.
For every one person who can pay attention to 10 or 20 or 50 streams of advice, I know 1000 others who are just drowning in information and ideas with no sense of coherence or direction. It’s just the idea-of-the-day club and it gets people nowhere.
I have never been that way. I’ve never paid serious attention to more than 3 or 4 people. There’s lots of stuff that goes on in the Big Marketing Mosh Pit that I only know about ‘cuz I heard it over the transom.
And you know what?
I have never regretted IGNORING all that noise out there. It’s not all that different from deciding not to watch the news on TV. I figure, if I need to know, somebody will call me and tell me about it.
(Maybe the tornado siren will go off and I’ll notice that the sky is a sickly green color and I’ll hopefully have enough sense to go hide in my basement.)
NOTE: Only paying attention to 3-4 people is only HALF the story.
The other half of the story is: Completely and totally immersing myself in ONE of those worlds until I know it inside and out. Until I can finish my mentor’s sentences for him, I know his thinking process and have a 100% clear picture of how to replicate it in my business.
For me that has meant taking two days out of my schedule, three times a year, getting on a plane and locking myself in a room with my “Marketers Fight Club.”
A Fight Club is not for casual business people, not for timid souls who keep “bankers hours” or for folks who learn marketing merely for entertainment purposes.
No, this is for people who desire to completely and totally master the art of marketing, to be true marketing black belts, who have their eyes and ears wide open….
….not wide open to whatever mindless promotional chatter is going on “out there,” but wide open to the dramas and lessons and quirks of human psychology that happen in everyday REAL life.
This is for people who want to be completely prepared for any and every situation that might come along. Men and women who will eventually fear no dark alley.
You know you’re a marketing maniac when your friends save pieces of “junk mail” and give it to you because they “thought you’d be interested” (and you are).
You know you’re a marketing maniac when your neighbor who owns a restaurant complains that he’s not getting enough customers and in 12 nanoseconds a complete seventeen-point marketing salvo forms inside your head.
You know you’re a marketing maniac when you finally understand that spewing your 17 point marketing plan all over your neighbor isn’t going to work and it’s actually OK to keep it to yourself. (Cuz unless he’s paying you 5 grand a month to advise him he’s just going to screw it all up anyway.)
I belong to a Marketing Junkies Fight Club (our last meeting was at an undisclosed location in Texas in April, and yes, people do kick my teeth in there) and I also host one for my own customers. It’s called Roundtable.
At our Roundtable meetings last week, about 1/4 of the members had experienced a record sales month for the entire history of their business, just since our previous meeting which was in January in Puerto Rico.
From attending our meeting last week, one might hardly even suspect that there was a soul-crushing recession going on “out there” in the Big Bad World.
This does not happen by accident. This happens because of dedication and focus and a ruthless process of elimination. Good ideas are constantly swept aside in favor of the great.
If you’re a member of a Marketing Maniac’s Fight Club, you can be sure that at least once a year somebody’s going to get out their brass knuckles and pound the snot out of you. And it’s gonna feel good because Real Men and Real Women appreciate discipline, wisdom and correction. (Also, the British women in the group, Nancy and Charlie, will always finish their sentences with the word “Dear” when they’re done disciplining you. “I’m so sorry to stick the knife in so deep, Dear.”)
Next Marketing Maniac’s Fight Club (normally referred to as “Roundtable”) is mid-October in Chicago. Meanwhile the on-ramp to Roundtable is a 2-day, 4-Man Intensive. The next Intensive is June 24-25, also in Chicago. Right here in my home office.
If you’re ready for such an experience, apply here:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/roundtable/
Perry Marshall
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
7 Comments on “Marketing Maniac's Fight Club”
OK, Perry. I have used your quote about fantasy in a blog post on my Corporate Tai Chi blog. You can read it at http://www.dianegold.com/corporatechi toward the bottom of the May 26 post.
Any comments on the article? And here’s a question, if you don’t mind. I was at a masterminding group this morning discussing how I think I can reach the corporate market without having superstar status with the end user, the individual. The consensus was that I have to offer a product for the mass market first, like a DVD on five minute fitness, and then, once I am proven and recognized by the individual, I can go to corporations who will hire me because I am famous. Am I in a fantasy world?
Thanks.
http://www.dianegold.com
Working On The Best Products For 5 Minute Revival!
I want to quote your last sentence when pitching CEOs who think they are getting productivity (rather than presenteeism, just a body count) out of their staff. Do you mind? It’s what my 5 minute first thing in the morning corporate tai chi is: turning people into productive machines instead of droning stress modules who hate their lives. Do you mind?
D
http://dianegold.com
Power For You and Your Team
By all means use it, Diane.
Perry:
Let’s say I meet you at a conference. I get your card. You might remember who I am when I send you my newsletter about corporate tai chi (which I minimally pitched to you a while back). What do you do?
Then, there’s the list of 2500 emails I have obtained from gathering business cards at meaningless networking events where I have absolutely built no relationships. I have never asked for mandatory opt in.
If I require it, my list will go down and I will have to look at myself in the mirror and realize my list is 30.
So, along with the newsletters I receive that are “just noise” and need to go, do I require double opt-in the way you and the other people I actually follow do to get rid of the unopened, the opened but unread, the bounced, and other never-to-be-buyers and start fresh and real?
D
http://www.dianegold.com
I don’t advocate using double opt-in unless you have to. But why not email everyone on your list and ASK them if they want to keep receiving your emails? You might be surprised at the results. In any case, fantasy is more fun than reality but reality is the only thing that pays.
Just scanning my email, I noticed one of those newsletters you ignore. I wanted to delete it, but I balked. It comes from an associate who has never and will never buy anything from me, who is not one of the 3 or 4 whose newsletters matter and has done less than an interested person’s effort to support my 5 minute corporate fit tai chi program or my kung fu or tai chi.
So, why don’t I unsubscribe? To be supportive and because the person doesn’t unsubscribe to mine? Both ego-centric strategies. If these newsletters were traditionally printed, thousands of forests worth of trees would be wasted in unwanted and unread material.
I am declaring this so that I can face myself. After all, if you say it out loud, you cannot deny it.
So, what will I do? I have already written personally to the one person to explain that the newsletter is not for me. Now I have to be more diligent about others.
I will continue to receive some newsletters ourely for future business connectivity possibilities and because I do not want to face the authors in person.
Best,
D
http://dianegold.com
Peacefully Impact Your Life Daily.
You can always change your email subscription for that newsletter to your secondary email box. But your primary email box should be guarded by attack dogs.
And who’s kidding who? They’re probably thinking the same thing about your newsletter, which they don’t read either. Life’s too short for pretending to listen to people you don’t really listen to.
(Unless you’re on Twitter, where everyone pretends to listen to everyone, and everyone pretends to not know that nobody’s listening. On Twitter, I actually do listen to 35 people. Presumably some people do in fact listen to me. Some people are upset because I don’t pretend to listen to four thousand. Isn’t there some book from the ’80s called The Bonfires of Vanity…?)
Perry