The Hazards of Tangling With Weekend Warriors

Mel,   One day I was waiting my turn at the barbershop and I happened to grab a copy of Guns & Ammo Magazine.   In it was a letter from an aspiring writer.   Young guy, still in college, and he thought writing about guns for a living was just about the coolest imaginable job.   He smartly asked if the editor had any tips for getting a job like that.   The editor replied that there are oh, maybe eight people in the whole world who manage to make a full time living writing about guns. Everybody else is just weekenders who pick up some spare change sharing the details of their hunting trips with everybody else.   He added that if you're going to write about guns and get paid for it, you'd better be a good photographer too.   Such is the nature of plunging headlong into a market dominated by enthusiasts.   Early in my career I indulged my love for music by spending 2 years designing car speakers at Jensen.   Turns out that solving acoustics problems can be just as hard as playing Rachmaninoff, and there's not much difference in the pay.   People who work in the audio industry do so because they like speakers, they like equipment, they like music.   For them, it takes a higher pay scale to lure them OUT of the audio biz.   I made 20% less at that job than I would have made designing plastic injection molding machines or whatever.   From the outside, selling to an enthusiast market LOOKS fun and easy, because the people you're selling to are a lot like you.   But in reality, half your customers want to knock you off and start their own gig.   There's less money in deals like that; the competition is more plentiful and often more committed, even if only for idealistic reasons.   Enthusiast markets also naturally have better ads than "business" markets.   Why?   Because enthusiasts know how to talk to other enthusiasts, regardless of whether they've cracked a marketing book or not. The ads in Guns & Ammo—some of them are great ads, if only because they communicate passion for the sport.   Same in Guitar Player magazine, same in Black Belt, same in a knitting mag.   That's why I usually try to steer new marketers and consultants away from these B2C markets and into the B2B world.   If you stroll blithely into an enthusiast market like health or self-defense, you're going to get your clock cleaned.   Instead, dig up a list of SIC codes, grab a cup of coffee and start reading.   Look for industries where they've never heard of two-step lead generation and think "pay per click" is something that holds stacks of paper together...   A "land of the blind" where you can amaze and astound with your one-eyed prowess...   If you choose to ignore this wisdom and blaze your own trail through the jungle, I wish you the best.   Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones who make it through alive.   But whatever you do, watch your step—   Or you might look up to realize you're the guy brandishing a paring knife in a room packed with AK-47s...   Carpe Diem,   Perry Marshall       ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

Cutting-Edge Secrets from 3 Marketing Masters (LIVE!)

An Evening with 3 Marketing Masters Wednesday, January 27th, 6:30PM $100 Admission - FREE for Mastermind members! Location TBA Near San Francisco Airport SAVE YOUR SPOT HERE    Mel,   I’m doing a very special live event with Alex Mandossian and Ted Prodromou next Wednesday.   If you don’t know Alex Mandossian…   He’s known as the Warren Buffet of the internet for his ability to make his partners money. He’s “marketing therapist” to big names like Jack Canfield and Harvey MacKay. He’s shared the stage with Tony Robbins, Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama.   And when Alex says he’s got something “special” to share, I pay attention...you should too.   Alex will join me and Ted, the author of the most respected books on LinkedIn and Twitter marketing, on January 27th.   We will share out favorite marketing discoveries of the last 12 months and then we’ll take your questions.   We’ll do live problem-solving. Maybe a hotseat or two? And you’ll decide what questions we tackle   It’ll be a fun night of cutting-edge marketing insights.   SAVE YOUR SEAT HERE    Perry Marshall   PS: But don’t wait! Alex and Ted are promoting this too. The event is less than a week away. And the room only holds FORTY people.  It WILL sell out.         ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

A Swiss Army Knife for Consultants? (Free Live Presentation)

Swiss Army Knife for Consultants and FREE Prospect Scorecard Free Presentation Wednesday, January 27, 12noon Eastern REGISTER HERE   Mel,   What’s your number one consulting problem for 2016? Find more clients? Qualifying clients? Close more clients? Make more money from each client? Keeping clients longer? Doing LESS work for more money? Well, after 15 years of being a consultant and consulting with consultants I’ve noticed something about them.   Most “stuck” consultants have… One way to find new clients One way to qualify clients One way to negotiate with clients One way to sign up new clients One way to do everything. Maybe two. Rarely three.   But what if you had a simple tool you could pull out that gave you 5-9 NEW ways…5-9 BETTER ways…of doing everything you do. You’d get unstuck in a hurry You’d find more prospects faster You’d make more money from each client You’d keep clients longer You’d work less and make more money. It’s all about having more blades on your knife…and pulling out the right one at the right time.   I call this simple tool Swiss Army Knife for Consultants. I’m going to introduce it on Wednesday, January 27 and GIVE AWAY one of the blades (The Prospect Scorecard) for FREE.   But you have to be on the presentation to get it!   REGISTER HERE   Carpe Diem, Perry Marshall     ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

Pharmacist Jerry And The Persuasion Pendulum

Mel,   Once upon a time when I was a network marketing junkie, this guy named Jerry Broering would roll into Chicago every few weeks.   A former pharmacist who oozed confidence from every pore, Jerry  delivered some of the most riviting presentations I've ever seen.   One of the Jerry's secrets was RHYTHM.   Not just in the cadence of his voice, but in the structure of his arguments.   He had this internal pendulum that would slow swing from emotion to logic, from "reasons why" to proof.   He'd talk about what the rat race feels like, then he'd read an excerpt from a credible book or magazine with some kind of actual depressing statistic.   (And he didn't just read it from notes, he'd hold up the book and read the section right out of it. He didn't just have a photocopy, he had the magazine itself. Proof.)   He'd talk about what it would be like to go scuba diving in the Caribbean—and then he'd show you pictures of him scuba diving in the Caribbean.   He'd talk about how much money you can make—then he'd show you one of his checks.   Back and forth, back and forth the pendulum would swing.   By the end, we'd be perched breathless on the edge of our seats.   The rhythm of promise and evidence, fact and emotion, relentlessly did its work.   Utterly spellbinding.   This isn't all that much different from the way songs are written.   Two verses—one gets the ball rolling, the second pushes it farther.   Then the chorus starts and the pendulum swings back. And so the song goes until it ends up at the chorus again.   It's a beat as old as singers and story tellers—it's part of what makes us human.   A good sales pitch has this same natural resonance.   A swinging, hypnotic cadence of upside and downside, itch and scratch, problem and solution, risk and promise.   Tap into this ageless rhythm in your copy.   Hit them with emotion and facts, bleak outlook and thrilling opportunity, bold promise and merciless takeaway...   And with every swing of that pendulum, you'll nudge your reader closer to the inevitable conclusion that he MUST have what you're offering.   Carpe Diem,   Perry Marshall       ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

Come See Me, Alex Mandossian & Ted Prodromou

An Evening with 3 Marketing Masters January 27th, 6:30PM, $100 Admission Location TBA Near San Francisco Airport SAVE YOUR SPOT HERE   Mel,   Here’s your chance to hear the latest breakthroughs discovered by 3 sharp internet marketing experts… Alex Mandossian - “The Warren Buffet of the Internet” Ted Prodromou - Ted wrote the book on LinkedIn and Twitter advertising And me, Perry Marshall We will share out favorite marketing discoveries of the last 12 months... and then we’ll take your questions.   We’ll do live problem-solving. Maybe a hotseat or two? And you’ll decide what questions we tackle   It’ll be a fun night of cutting-edge marketing insights.   SAVE YOUR SEAT HERE   Perry Marshall   PS: But don’t wait! Alex and Ted are promoting this too. The event is less than a week away. And the room only holds FORTY people. It WILL sell out.     ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

Smashing Idols in the Temple Of Info Marketing

Mel,    Let's get one thing clear right now:   Organizing, creating and communicating information—and getting paid well to do it—sure beats mopping floors or hunting yak meat for dinner.   Low inventory, printing on demand, high margins, selling downloadable stuff on the web, selling advice and insight for top dollar—it's a pretty fine gig.   But contrary to marketing land folklore, it's NOT for everyone.   Is this the "perfect" business for you?   First of all, the perfect business for you is the one that employs your own giftedness and unique talents...   Capitalizes on your past experience...   Engages your passions and interests...   Is the info business good for your passions and interests?   Maybe, maybe not.   If you don't like to write or speak, then you'll have to hire other people to do all your writing and speaking, and that's a big handicap.   If you don't eat, breathe and sleep marketing and advertising, the info business is a bad business for you too.   Another HUGE myth is that an info biz runs on autopilot.   Now it is possible to generate some "passive income" this way.   But with the steady parade of Pandas, Penguins and Google slaps, this gets tougher every day.   To stay profitable you have to penetrate deeply into your market.   Most of the money in any market is "underground."   It's only available to those who have achieved a degree of recognition and longevity, and have built a trusting, ongoing relationship with customers.   Not the one-time sale, but the cultivation of a following over time.   Full Time Info Marketer = Cat on a Hot Tin Roof   This is NOT a business where you lay in your hammock for months on end with nary a care or thought while people rabidly consume your stuff and a part-time assistant occasionally replies to their emails.   Yes, you are a paper and ink alchemist.   You do have enormous leverage. The value of your insights has little or nothing to do with how much time it takes you to develop them.   You can automate many, many things; you can have most customer service done for you by part time staff, and you can reach hundreds of thousands of people without ever talking to a single one of them. You can take vacations and even sabbaticals.   But you can't turn your brain off. If you have a following, a 'herd', a group of hot, responsive customers—you can't ignore them for very long, or they'll go away.   So if you're in the information business full tilt, you need to be prolific.   Whether it's emails, newsletters, teleseminars, seminars, postcards, videos, mentoring programs, new products, CD's or whatever (notice that's a pretty big list of choices), your group needs to hear from you.   That's the reality of the "pure info marketing" approach.   What I recommend for most people is the hybrid approach.   It's much easier to run an information business when the product is only a part of what you sell.   I started my business as a consultant, and because I was already known in my industry, got paying clients right away.   I spent the next year getting my information business up to speed, which was a trial and error process.   If you do consulting—if you perform, hands-on, what you also teach people to do, then you always have a cash cow you can fall back on.   You also have more to write about.   Most of us would prefer not to be trading hours for dollars, but here's a little secret:   In the end, anything you do, no matter how automated it is, boils down to a certain number of hours for a certain number of dollars.   Let's say you pull off something really brilliant and it takes very little work to maintain it—it may net you $20,000 per hour.   But twenty grand is still a finite number.   And if you climb to the top of the consulting heap, fine-tune your pricing and build a "support machine" to handle the mundane details, well...   You'll find your hourly returns are nothing to sneeze at.   Carpe Diem,   Perry Marshall       ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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

[Trusted Authority] Are you being compared to other consultants?

Mel,   The last time you lost a consulting project opportunity, were you compared to other consultants who offer similar solutions to you?   It can be an awkward situation.   You’re being compared to another consultant, yet you believe that you authentically can do the best job possible for the client at a reasonable fee.   Yet, the prospective client lets you know (if they are polite) that they chose another consultant who they believe can provide a similar solution.   You shake off the loss and say to yourself: “Oh well, I did the best I could, I’ll get the next one.”   Here’s a really important sales myth that I learned from Ari Galper, The World’s #1 Authority On Trust-Based Selling that you’ll want to be aware of, if you want to become a Trusted Authority in your market:   ** Your potential clients are not comparing you to other consultants. They are actually ranking you based on how much trust you convey, and how much authority you project.**    News flash: Trust isn’t enough anymore, you need to now become a Trusted Authority in your market to bring in the highest quality clients that only want to work with the best.   What you bring to bear right now as you sell your consulting services is a roll-up of all of your experience and expertise into a single pitch for a project.   What I mean is, you work really hard to “prove” to your potential client that you are the best choice.   When you are a Trusted Authority, by default, you are the only choice.   You no longer have to defend yourself or prove yourself ever again.   If you’re a Professional Business or Corporate Consultant, discovery how you can become a Trusted Authority in your market on February 15, 17, and 19th (in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta).   Ari is coming to the US (he’s been living in Sydney for the last 10 years) for a nation-wide tour and is holding his world-famous Trusted Authority Summit® destined to revolutionize the consulting industry.   If you don’t know Ari, he is one of the sharpest and most respected world-class mentors you will ever meet.   If you’re one of the first 35 Professional Business or Corporate Consultants to apply and be accepted, you can attend this game-changing training for free ($2,500 fee waived).   Begin your Trusted Authority journey by clicking here…   To your success,     ***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:   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