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

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.