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Of ALL the assets you can possess as a marketer, there is one thing that trumps them all:

You wanna make a boatload of money selling information products?

Go to aspiring, not-quite-graduated-from-kindergarten wanna-be business people. Then sell them a big, bright-red “Easy” button. Some turn-key opportunity where someone’s figured everything out for you. Tell ’em they just need to work the system.

That sells.

Trouble is, it hardly ever works.

Why?

I’ve been banging on pots and pans since I was 11 or 12 years old. An incurably rhythmic guy.

A few years ago on my birthday, I finally admitted to myself that I was a drummer at heart. I said, “I have no idea where this is going and I’ll probably never make a dime playing drums. Well screw it, I love music and I’m just going to buy myself a drum set for my birthday.”

(Ever have trouble giving yourself permission to just have fun? Ever have to talk yourself into just doing something you enjoy?)

I’ve written on numerous occasions about the marketing wizardry of Big Ass Fans, the Kentucky company who made an otherwise boring product into a highly successful brand personality.

From time to time I get photos like this one from UK AdWords consultant David Rothwell, who’s on vacation in Florida. A company called Bad Ass Coffee:

We’ve all been working too hard lately. Time to do something fun today. Today, an ad that was posted on Craig’s List:

Seeking someone to live my life for six months

We all know about the proverbial “shelf help” guy who buys all kinds of books and courses and never does anything with them. We’ve ALL been that person, even the best of us.

What if you only implemented 5% and skipped the other 95%? Would you be a shiftless lazy loser?

Q: How do you kill a Facebook campaign?

A:

Today, six things that in my humble opinion are really cool.

…from my nephew, Ben Pieratt:

Dear Graphic and Web Designers, please understand that there are greater opportunities available to you.

In engineering school my professor, Dr. Soukup, was a stoic, military-general kind of guy. Every week he would give us homework. One week the assignment was especially maddening.

Turns out it was impossible to solve with ‘textbook’ formulas. You had to use a special computer program to solve it.

But he never said anything about that. It took consultations with several other students and another professor to solve.

So when I finally showed up for class, homework in hand, I was mad….