Do You Practice this Entrepreneurial "Discipline"?

What are You For & Against? Read the Perry S. Marshall & Associates For/Against Manifesto Here   Mel,   Just a couple of weeks ago, a client came to my house for a one-on-one consultation.  He had paid for a full day of my time (not cheap). He had paid for round trip airfare. Paid for a hotel. Given up a couple days from running his busy company. He had thorny business concerns that we needed to unpack, reframe, and hopefully solve.   This was serous business   But before noon, he stopped me and said, "OK, I think we're good.  I got what I came for.  I'm going to visit some people while I'm here in town."   Um, ok...great.   After he left, I told my wife, Laura, what happened and she said, "So, what are you going to do with your afternoon off?"   I muttered, "Well, I've got a webinar tomorrow I could work on, and I guess I could bang out a few more pages in the book..."   She stopped me, "Perry, a client just told you that you gave him a full day's value in just a couple of hours. Don't go back to work. Celebrate. Take the afternoon off and do something FUN!"    She was right, of course. She's always right about stuff like that.    Most of us entrepreneurs rush from task to task, fire to fire, crises to crises, project to project.  I'm guilty too.   And when something good happens...when we finally GET what we've been working for...we land a big client or we pull off a great product launch or we hit a revenue goal or whatever...we just kinda mumble and move on to the next thing.    That must stop.    We need to practice the discipline of celebration. Yes, it's a discipline. It sounds funny to put it that way, but it is.  The proof is my example above and the fact that you were probably nodding your head when I told it.  I had to be reminded of it. We all do, it seems. We have to be reminded to have fun.    I need to be reminded even though it's part of my own company's "For/Against" manifesto, which I helped write a few years ago!   "We are FOR gratitude and celebration under every circumstance."    Why are we for celebration?  Because it's part of an abundance mentality.  A worldview that says, "If I take time to celebrate and give thanks, I'm not losing time. I'm not losing money. In fact, the very act of celebrating and giving thanks will bring me...and the world...even more blessing."   So, I did take the afternoon off, went for a walk (it was a gorgeous day), hit my favorite music store, chatted with some good friends.  In a very simple, but profound way, I celebrated.   And I returned to work the next day refreshed, peaceful, thankful, and, yes, more productive.   When is the last time you celebrated?  Are you FOR celebration?   Like me, you might need a gentle reminder. So, I'm giving it to you.  What happened this week that you should celebrate? Even if it's something small, make sure you celebrate and give thanks this weekend.  And give some thought to what you're FOR and AGAINST.     Carpe Diem, Perry Marshall                 ***NOTE: Please do not reply directly to this email, instead go to http://support.perrymarshall.com     Free Video We manage our emails with Infusion. This Guide and Video explain my secret marketing sauce. If you no longer wish to receive our emails, click the link below:  Update subscriber options   Perry S. Marshall & Assoc 159 N. Marion Street #295 Oak Park, Illinois 60301 United States (312) 386-7459   Having trouble viewing this email? Click here

Warning: This Will Freak Some People Out

Day One: Liberation Seminar Go from 60 Hours to 20 Hours Per Week September 28, Chicago Apply Here     Mel,   The alarm clock meep-meeps at you at 5:45am.  You hit the snooze once or twice, and then roll out of bed and rub the 5 or 6 hours of sleep from your eyes. Shower Dress Coffee Commute Then it's straight to the inbox, the voice messages, the texts, the snail mail, the faxes. A flurry of phone calls, minor fire fighting, and the various and inevitable crises du jour. Maybe you catch a few minutes respite at lunch, but more likely you plow right through it. Morning slides into afternoon...slides into evening. Commute home. Arriving after 7pm, sometimes as late as 10 or 11? More emails, more voice messages, more minor crises. Collapse into bed. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...         Distracted from distraction by distraction         Filled with fancies and empty of meaning         Tumid apathy with no concentration         Men and bits of paper whirled by the cold wind...             T.S. Eliot "The Four Quartets" Question: Do we like being hamsters on a wheel? Answer: Yes, we do. You may object. You may grumble and complain, in an attempt to prove that you do not wish for this rut of distraction from distraction by distraction.  You may even say, "There's got to be a better way."   But, deep in your mind, you love the hamster wheel. We all do. Your mind is a powerful tool.  But it adores routine.  It worships repetition. It seeks out the oh-so-soothing compulsions of "work". It justifies its obsessions with work ethic platitudes. It aches to stay stuck in the grooves it has worn into your life. Call it addiction. Call it obsession. Call it compulsion. It is hard-wired into us.  The mind, left to its own devices will seek out the hamster wheel. And happily keep you spinning, and getting nowhere, for as long as you stay in its hazy, hypnotizing spell. The symptoms... How does sitting perfectly still, with no sound or flickering images, for even 5 minutes make you feel? Can you do it? Do you feel agitated when you can't find your smart phone for 15 minutes?  When's the last time you switched it off? If I told you take a week off and not tell anyone where you are, does your mind sputter and misfire ? If I told you take a month off, does that make your hand shake? Your heart palpitate? If I told you you MUST assemble a staff that works better when you're not around, do the cold sweats start?   (I still have all those symptoms, by the way. OK, maybe not the smart phone thing, but Mr. 80/20 Sales & Marketing still fidgets when he has "nothing to do".)   And if I said that you MUST go from working 60 hours down to 20 hours a week  to achieve your dreams...would you believe me? I promise you it's true. The longer I'm on this planet the more I believe there may be few things truer in this life. If you don't get off the hamster wheel...you'll never get off the hamster wheel. Period. Your mind simply will not allow it. Unless you completely shift your paradigm. Unless you completely reframe the questions.   On September 28, Richard Koch will completely reframe the question. Shatter your paradigms. He'll show a select group of participants, how to... Go from working 60 to 20 hours per week Get away for days, weeks, even a month, and have your business work BETTER when you're NOT around Hire a small number of people and train them to do your $100, $1000 and even $10,000 per hour tasks (this can be reduced to a formula!) Operate from a state of "recreation", not crises management Go from being distracted from distraction by distraction to doing what you really want to do. You won't get there through micromanagement, you won't get there through working harder, you won't get there through tips and tricks and tactics. Those are all distractions from distraction by distraction. Hamster wheels. You must reframe the question. Apply here.    Carpe Diem, Perry Marshall   PS: Warning: This is not for everyone.  It will freak some people out. Some people simply cannot handle being "hands off", being "unavailable", being "out of the loop".     So, if being hands on, constantly available, and in the loop fills your soul with deep satisfaction, this is not for you.     ***NOTE: Please do not reply directly to this email, instead go to http://support.perrymarshall.com     Free Video We manage our emails with Infusion. This Guide and Video explain my secret marketing sauce. If you no longer wish to receive our emails, click the link below:  Update subscriber options   Perry S. Marshall & Assoc 159 N. Marion Street #295 Oak Park, Illinois 60301 United States (312) 386-7459   Having trouble viewing this email? Click here

Is Your Sales Funnel Obsolete? Take the Quiz

Two-Minute Quiz Tells You “How Smart is My Sales Funnel?” Take the Quiz Here   Mel,   Is your business suffering from Internet Inflation? Just a few years ago, you could write a few killer Adwords ads, drive traffic to a landing page, give away a free report, and build a list of leads fairly quickly and inexpensively. Then you drove them to a 27-page sales letter that tried to address every single benefit of your product, as well as every single possible objection to your product that those prospects might have...and hopefully pull enough sales to make the whole machine profitable. And maybe send them to an autoresponder sequence that tried to sort and sift and sell them even more. Well, as you know, that machine is sputtering. Nearly every entrepreneur I consult with is telling me… “I’m having to buy more traffic just to get the same results I got as little as a year ago.” “It’s harder to convert opt ins to paying customers.” “My sales people are spending way too much time on “tire kickers” and not enough on real, honest-to-goodness prospects.” “Sorting the wheat from the chaff is taking a lot longer than it used to.” And it’s because of “internet inflation.”  What’s internet inflation? Internet inflation goes like this… As information becomes easier and cheaper to come by, getting people to “pay” for that information, even with just an email address, gets more and more expensive. Why? Because nobody wants information. They want clarity. And most traditional internet marketing sales funnels (probably yours) don’t provide clarity.   They just provide more information. If you’re giving away a free report, white paper, video, webinar, email series, free sample or checklist, what you’re telling your visitors is, “I know you’re trying to decide if my product is right for you, so here’s some more work for you to do to find out if it’s right for you”. And that doesn’t cut it in 2014. I know from personal experience with hundreds of thousands of visitors, that it is way harder and more expensive to get people to part with their email address for a one-size-fits-all information widget than it was just 12 months ago. Your visitors, your prospects are getting smarter, more discerning... Is your sales funnel getting smarter with them? Here’s a quick way to find out. Take the “Scorecard Sales Funnel” quiz here. If your score qualifies you, I’ll show you a way to... Cut your time from lead to sale. Charge higher fees Lower your cost per lead Eliminate time wasted on tire kickers. But I won’t send it to you unless you qualify.   Take the 2-minute quiz here to see if you do. Carpe Diem, Perry Marshall P.S. If you read everything above and thought “My free report is still working just fine”, you should definitely take the quiz. Because, if you qualify, I’ll show you how to keep using that free report and inject it with “opt-in steroids”.     ***NOTE: Please do not reply directly to this email, instead go to http://support.perrymarshall.com     Free Video We manage our emails with Infusion. This Guide and Video explain my secret marketing sauce. If you no longer wish to receive our emails, click the link below:  Update subscriber options   Perry S. Marshall & Assoc 159 N. Marion Street #295 Oak Park, Illinois 60301 United States (312) 386-7459   Having trouble viewing this email? Click here