Free super-cool tool takes "stuff you hate" off your plate by orienting you towards "stuff you truly love":
80/20 Energy Reclaim
Makes your life better in 5 minutes
www.perrymarshall.com/energy
Mel,
Last call: the final round of our Who Knows Planet Perry Best? trivia contest is live. The last 5 questions dropped today. The top 10 scorers win a free month of RenAI, and we'll announce the winners Monday. The link is at the bottom of this email.
~
October 2001, I parachuted out, scrambled and hoped things would work out.
December 2001 was financially the best month I'd ever had in my life.
And I'll never forget the first time Laura and I had money and felt like it was OK to spend it.
I was out running errands and heard about a new album on the radio. I stopped at a bookstore and they had the CD in stock.
I paid retail price for the CD. Took the album home and played it.
Before that, almost all my music was either 1) Christmas or birthday gifts, 2) "Get 10 albums for 1 penny" deals from the record & tape club, or 3) used CDs from record shops.
When you buy music THAT way, you pick up whatever you can find and hope you like it.
For a very long time, my "stretch goals" had been around music. When I was in Amway, I had a goal of hitting "2500" and I promised myself I would buy a portable CD player if I hit it.
I never hit the goal, so for years there was no portable CD player.
The pattern was, "Perry dangles artistic carrots in front of himself, starves his inner artist, while he utterly fails at a business he should never have been doing in the first place."
Suddenly I was actually buying THE music I actually wanted, on purpose. (5+ years before iTunes and streaming platforms.)
Going down very particular rabbit holes, cultivating collections of specific artists.
Meanwhile every day in my makeshift basement office, I was recording my own "albums," creating my own body of work, and soon began turning out my own CDs. The "Guerrilla Marketing" CD which I'm still proud of today... as well as many interviews for Renaissance Club.
Becoming the kind of music fan I aspired to be... and creating courses and materials to attract my own fans... both of those activities are intimately connected.
Only a true fan understands what fans crave.
Nobody becomes a great artist without becoming a great FAN first.
I remember giving myself permission to be a superfan. I needed to tell myself, "Dude, you have permission to nerd out on a band or artist all you want. You can buy ALL their albums. You can read ALL their books. You can go to ALL their concerts or presentations or lectures."
I went deep into the work of Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, Jeff Paul.... and Dream Theater, Rush, Neal Morse and Mike Portnoy. Those two worlds (OG marketing dudes and prog metal bands) are quite similar – both highly technical worlds demanding tremendous levels of skill and precision, combined with much taste and artistic judgment.
They both attract obsessive, hyper-responsive customers.
Both require epic collaborations in order to work. They're made up of LOTS of players who jam and improvise and produce great art. The big names are just the tip of the iceberg.
Every day I would spend hours writing, composing and creating... with my favorite music playing in the background. Or cranked up to 8 on the volume control.
It makes me smile when I remember how, as I gave myself permission to be a superfan, my artistic horizons expanded effortlessly.
The only way you learn how to make enduring art is to immerse yourself in enduring art.
There is nothing worse than dishonest art.
And there's nothing better than art that, through whatever trials of fire, woodshedding, practice, composition, editing, writing, re-writing, recording and performing, HITS THE MARK.
For 25 years I've been obsessed with how to create work that stands the test of time, even after the topic itself goes out of date. "Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords" 2007 is still a great basic marketing book even though every single screen shot and menu is out of date.
That comes from being a Bible scholar from age 5... from immersing myself in Classical and Jazz. Rush has been playing 53 years and they're on tour this year. They're playing epic tunes from the 1970s that still sound fresh, energetic and alive. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis is still one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded and I still love it.
There's something about an artist striving to achieve immortality. If you string 16th notes together just right, you do indeed achieve immortality.
I've always believed there's a way to build the things you "have to build" from things you love and crave.
I've always found you can energize your work by injecting your side passions.
You can avoid doing stuff you hate by creatively mixing in whatever you love and letting your passion propel you.
Try it – in fact we made an AI giveaway tool to celebrate this week, it's called "80/20 Energy Reclaim."
Use the tool and give yourself permission to go a little crazy.
Go to www.perrymarshall.com/energy – Tell it the stuff you love, even if it's NOT obvious how it makes you money – and see if it can find a way to swap out your hate list with stuff you like better.
Perry Marshall
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