The Rusty Yellow School Bus with the Four Million Dollar Engine

Mel,   Greg Marsden's a skinny saxophone player from Grand Rapids Michigan, a proverbial square peg in a world full of round holes. His cel phone ringtone is "Love Supreme" by John Coltrane, he's played more than his fair share of smoky gigs in sleepy jazz clubs, gleaned inspiration from dysfunctional musical geniuses, held down a bevy of strange day jobs and labored for even stranger bosses.    For some years he toiled in the land of big-time e-commerce companies, building gigantic link farms for booking hotel rooms, attending clueless internet conferences where the blind lead the gullible and MBA wannabe's rack up points for their curriculum vitaes.    Finally he stumbled onto a company bold enough to let him craft his own vision, who let him practice his jazz improvisation chops on their AdWords campaigns. Greg knows that in any endeavor - music, accounting, baseball, pay per click - once you master the basic scales there's an artistic zone where possibilities for innovation are seemingly without end.    Nobody knew who this new company was, and for the most part they still don't know. Greg challenges Goliath players, drag racing down main street against boys who drive their daddies' vehicles, fine-looking cars with picture perfect paint jobs and mag wheels and polished chrome. Prom queen rides shotgun, pause at the stoplight, engines revving....    Greg pulls up in his Rusty Yellow School Bus and asks if they'd like to race.   Guffaws waft from the open windows of the shiny AC Cobra, what kind of idiot in a school bus could dream of acing us? Doesn't he know we've got a 427 under the hood? ....engines race, light flashes green, the scent of burning rubber as tires squeal.    For a few seconds the AC Cobra's in the lead. But the boys of summer driving daddy's car don't know that Greg's school bus has a 4 million dollar engine. They've never seen the 3000 horses of raw power, the exquisite transmission with nine adroit gears and titanium axles. They don't know you can install Indy racing tires on a bus.    Zero to sixty in 5 seconds and Greg's not even in fourth gear yet. Top speed exceeds 200MPH. Nobody really knows what top speed is.    They also don't know that Greg repaints his bus a different color every week and he kicks ass every race he runs.    Show 'em tail lights, Greg.    Show 'em tail lights, Mel.    The playing field really is level now. Once upon a time you had to be a $100 million, or billion dollar company to play. But Greg's company was a genuine startup and they hit $10 mil. A Google ad budget of $25,000 PER DAY.    Read Greg's story and see his impressive growth charts at    http://www.perrymarshall.com/personalcoaching/stories/#1018      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

2 Action-Jackson Bobsledders Achieve Success

Mel,   Last week I interviewed two Bobsled Grads, Michael Strickland of Ship A Car Direct, and Gonz Medina of Blue Chip Wrestling.   Gonz Medina says:    "We came into the Bobsled Run and had a lot of marketing experience. We thought, “We’re not going to learn a whole lot that’s going to be applicable and really make some big leaps in our business.” To your point right here, #1 is “We know nothing.” What we thought we knew was completely different than when we would test out assumptions.    We grew our retail sales year-over-year 48%, and we’ve done that two consecutive years in a row, which is amazing, and we’ve grown our list.    Even if your conversion rate stays the same, just getting a huge increase in your opens makes a significant difference. Just testing that little part and then moving into the copy and testing the copy next, you get your lift from the first step and then you get a bigger lift from the second step.    We’re getting ready to send out our new catalog, and instead of sending 30,000 catalogs we’re going to send 5,000 catalogs to our top 5,000 buyers that we KNOW are going to open up their wallets and spend money.    When we moved from Aweber to Infusionsoft we had 8,000 customers on that list. We pretty much ritualistically ignored these people. We sent them all the same e-blasts periodically. When we weren’t quite organized, we’d just blast it out every so often.    Now we’ve grown that list from 8,000 to a little over 44,000 people."    Michael Strickland of Ship A Car Direct reports:    "I run an auto transportation brokerage. That’s about as sexy as wrestling onesies. But just to even talk about it more broadly, as Gonz was going through a lot of the stuff he said, I was sitting here nodding my head and jotting down notes and thinking about how nothing that is taught in Bobsled Run is in any way industry-specific.    It doesn’t really matter what you do, what you sell, or what your business is. You will reap benefits just by using the techniques and the skills and stuff that you acquire.    Prior to signing up for Bobsled Run myself, I would classify myself as a spider monkey. I didn’t come into Bobsled Run as an 800 pound gorilla. I’ve sort of evolved into an 800 pound gorilla.    When I joined Bobsled Run I was running a business that was doing $6-7K per week. Our yearly gross was somewhere between $300K-$400K pretty consistently. During the course of Bobsled Run I was able to grow that, so that by the end of Bobsled I was averaging $9K per week. This was spring of 2011 when I first did Bobsled.    So here's what happened: Perry in his way just sort of sits there and I blather on like I’m doing right now, then Perry just goes, “So why you? Why am I going to buy from you?” and I’d never been asked that question before. I’d never even considered it. It was like, “Of course my customers want to buy from me because….” and then there was just radio silence.    I was like, “Gosh, why DO customers buy from me?” It was a big stumper.    Then we just started chewing on it and came up with something that gave me a unique angle on my industry. Subsequently it made my ads better and just started unlocking every facet of my business. It made marketing channels much easier to decide what was right and what was wrong.    My AdWords account took off as a result of it, and not just by the sort of blocking and tackling of basic split testing and those sorts of things. It was really just coming at the whole thing from a different angle.    I literally went into Bobsled Run and had the money from a profitable month and I could either put it in the bank or I could put it in the Bobsled Run. When I put it in the Bobsled Run I literally felt like I was putting all this money into buying this bag of magic beans, that I’d go home and have to tell my wife, “Either the beanstalk’s going to grow and we’re going to go up to find the golden eggs, or we just sold our cow.”    The reason my investment in my own education has grown exponentially in the years since I first joined Bobsled Run is because so far, quite honestly, everything has been magic beans. Every investment I make in terms of my education and my investment in myself and my learning as an entrepreneur has paid back probably 10- or 20-fold.    You’ll hear the analogy that once you unlock AdWords, when you figure out how to put $1 in and get $2 to pop out, you just start throwing more dollars into it. It’s the same thing with my education with every investment that I make.    I’ve grown it to the point where literally two weeks ago right around the Labor Day holiday our sales dipped below $30K for the week and I was like, “Ugh, what a terrible week!” The same thing has happened to my bottom line and my income, and it’s all ROI from stuff that I’ve learned in Bobsled Run, hands down, without a question.    Without even seeing whatever Perry is going to guarantee you right now, I would back that guarantee, whatever it is. If you do what he tells you to do, and you don’t get the results that he says you’re going to get, you can cash in on him and you can call me and cash in on me, too. How’s that?"    Gonz Medina chimes in:  "And if you just take one piece, the 80/20, the USP – if you just take one little nugget and learn it and use it and live it and put it in your business, you’re going to get the lift. You’re going to get your value out of the course."    Starts Tuesday, Oct 14. By application only. Apply here now:    http://www.Bobsledrun.com    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

AdWords + Facebook + Conversion = Bobsled Run 2014

Mel,   Once a year we arm our students to the TEETH with a full-on traffic + conversion battle plan. It's called Personal AdWords Coaching. We call it "Bobsled Run" because, just like the Olympic event, it's fast and furious.    Last year, I added Facebook ads to the toolbox.    Until recently, Google AdWords had no equal. Not even close. The features, scalability, the sheer power of Google's ad platform were utterly unmatched. 80% market share.    Now, Facebook has come alongside Google as a force to be reckoned with.    Admittedly, Facebook is still crude in many respects. In absolute terms it has less reach.    However, Facebook traffic is still cheap (won’t be a year from now, I promise you!) and you can acquire LOTS of new customers FAST for not much money.    Google AdWords is a lead sled. It’s like a 40 foot motor coach. It takes a lot of gas but once you’ve got it lumbering down the road, it’s luxurious, air-conditioned comfort.    Facebook is like a 300cc Kawasaki motor bike strapped to the back of that RV. It’s lightning fast, produces quick results, can buzz down little trails and side paths with ease.    It’s great to have an RV… it’s great to have a Kawasaki motorcycle – but isn’t it better to have BOTH?    That’s why Facebook forms a perfect complement to AdWords. 2013 Bobsled Run harnesses BOTH. Starts Tuesday October 7.    By application only. Apply here now:    http://www.BobsledRun.com    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

Is Your Sales Funnel Lacking this Critical Attribute?

4 Little Hinges that Swing Big Doors Fix Your Sales Funnel Fast Free Webinar Today at 4pm Eastern REGISTER HERE   Mel,   You know that the 80/20 principle says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. That's true.  You get better results by focusing on the "Big 20" and ignoring the "Little 80".    But there's a subtle power to 80/20 that some entrepreneurs miss.    Speed.    Working 80/20 helps you get better results but it also helps you get better results FASTER. And in the modern age, where everyone (especially your competitors) knows everything, instantaneously, it all comes down to who can execute faster. Speed is king.     It matters little what you know, or how great your product is, or how hungry your market is, or how profitable your distribution system is if you can't move FAST.    He who hesitates is lost.    And nothing slows you down more than wasting time on the "Little 80". Today, knowing what to focus on and what to ignore, is as crucial as what you sell.    Today at 4pm Eastern, Bryan Todd and I will laser in on the FOUR hinges that swing big doors in your sales funnel. The four levers that will impact your bottom line FAST.    Add the critical element of SPEED to your funnel today.    Register here.    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