F#$@ing Guru Lover
I did an e-mailing to the guys on my list a few months ago to tell them about a cool product I found, and one of the e-mails I got back said F$%CK YOU GURU LOVER! This was a very odd e-mail. Never gotten anything close to hate mail before, so the “content” stuck with me. 🙂
During the past four months since I discovered Frank Kern I have been studying the info marketing gurus. There is a loosely defined pack of guys, who market the living bejeebus out of each others products, and have a massive following. For those of you who are part of this world, you must think I am crazy that I did not even know they existed until 4 months ago at Frank Kern’s List Control event. This world consists of products like List Control, Kajabi, Product Launch Formula, Traffic Geyser, and on and on. A lot of people buy millions of dollars of these guys products every year. Most of these products are sold through partnerships with strategic partners, often on a 50/50 split.
For those of you in the “guru” world, the world I come from has events in it like Pubcon which has a few thousand people, Adtech, again a few thousand attendees, and Affiliate Summit with also thousands of attendees. Most of the attendees consider themselves internet marketers. There are very few info products, and instead information is shared freely, or through paid consulting. This is not a small nor insignificant world, with companies deeply involved with it such as google and facebook. In this world I am as Neil Patel says about himself, kinda a big deal.
So I have been spending the weekend at Jeff Walkers Product Launch Formula event. During it I have met the worlds winningest dog trainer for doggy obstacle courses (which has a technical name that alludes me), the world champion at hitting a golf ball the farthest, and gotten to be good friends with Mike Murphy, who is a producer, director and animator, and has done some bad ass animation like being 1/6th of the animators on Golem in Lord of the Rings, and the guy who animated Mrs. Butterworth in the Geico ads. Fricken brilliant and warm good guy. All of these guys are training at internet marketing to take what they rock at, and get it online in a big way.
There is a lot less drinking at this event than there is my “normal” internet events. There are some heavily technical people, and a lot of brilliant people. Most of the people are very, very, very nice. They are polite.
It was great to meet Jeff Walker today face to face for the first time. In fact he hugged me. 🙂 Turned out Jeff watched some of Jenny and mines crazy videos and liked them. I was really touched by that. In fact a lot of the people at the event had watched them. I have learned one thing about doing internet marketing to internet marketers, it is that by doing so they know you, and your reputation may be good, or it may be bad. I give a lot and take very little from internet marketers, so it acts as a nice calling card before I ever meet them.
I find that very few people in the “guru” space, or their students go to the events I normally do, and visa versa. I think the few people that learn and understand both sides of the tracks on this, are positioned to kick some major ass, and the rest who because of their own fears do not, will be held vastly back in their success. In face, through learning the Product Launch Formula, it has totally changed the way I view and use facebook ads for me and my clients.
So yes, I am now a F#$%ing Guru lover. :), but I still love Matt Cutts too. 🙂
I absolutely agree. Internet Marketing Gurus are definitely someone to look up to in terms of ideas of where your marketing career could go. If you want to develop a name and get in a position of money and resources like gurus you have to just start.. start anywhere but start.
ReplyThis might sound naive, but I really didn’t even know that this existed. I have a tough time getting a handle on marketing even though I do SEO writing for clients. The product used to be the focus, guess not anymore.
ReplySo by going to the “events’ your potential for earnings is way bigger than those who stay in small groups and learn from each other but don’t expand? At least by going to events you are networking and that is a sure way to branch out!
ReplyA good conference is tough to beat. It’s one thing to communicate online, and there’s nothing more convenient, but it’s pretty tough to get the kind of traction and detail that can happen in a face-to-face environment. Was there a liveblog of the event?
ReplyThe potential for internet marketing is obviously huge and it is no surprise to hear how big it is getting but because the internet is so anonymous it is important to meet at conferences and get to know the reasons behind the ideas of the best in the business.
ReplyKnowing the right people can often make all the difference in being succesfull on the internet. Thanks for the great article posted.
Reply@TekCrunch:
The information products normally cost around 2 grand, some higher.
Included in that price is normally an invite to attend a live seminar. They get some great content in the can for other information products, they invite people they do JV’s (joint ventures) with to be speakers at the events and in turn people sign up to their list and then they buy the other guys products.
It was only a matter of time before the info product “gurus” got into the affiliate space and we have Shoemoney, dk and John Chow to thank.
If I can be so bold as to make a suggestion in addition to following Jeff Walker and Frank Kern there are some others worthy of mention (and btw Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy two iconic offline guys sought out the assistance of Jeff, Frank etc. to crack online). You should follow John Reese (1st to do a million dollar day), John Carlton (copywriter par excellence), Jeff Johnson (genius for free traffic), Mike Koenigs (co-founder of Traffic Geyser), Ryan Deiss (Facebook and SEO), Ryan Lee (continuity programs), Mike Hill (CPA marketing), Mike Filsaime the list could go on and on.
I signed up to most of their lists and am formulating a list of who promotes who etc. really interesting, all of the affiliate and search guys can learn a lot about mutual co-operation.
ReplyIn order to have good business you have to be around the successful people who have the same goals. Seminar, conferences in your field is always a good source for networking. You meet some amazing individuals and get ideas in the process to better your business.
ReplyWow! I must say, I don’t know a lot about marketing, but it certainly sounds to me like “treading both sides of the tracks” is the right way to go. If it makes you happy and advances your career, more power to you for being a “F%$@ing Guru Lover,” right? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. Anyway, congrats on meeting so many interesting people, and on receiving your first hatemail, lol.
ReplyWhile I have never received hate mail either, I also have never had anyone curse at through email. That’s physco crazy(obscenities through email really come on). But I am excited for you, that you got to meet Mike Murphy, who I just found out today through your post is the animation guy behind that Geico commercial with Mrs. Butterworth that’s so cool!
ReplyIt is interesting to see how much farther people are able to get ahead in their careers by knowing the right people (Not pertaining to you.). It shouldn’t be used as a crutch, but it is always good to have the right people in high places. 🙂
ReplyThere is a third world, network marketing, that has a crop of gurus teaching that crowd what to do. The formula (thanks Jeff Walker) is the same. Make a product, position, promote it, and partner with fellow gurus. They just tweak it for the mlm crowd. The audiences are similar i.e. People are trying to learn a secret to making money online. There is no secret. Just hard work. Sorry, that word scares people away…. Just bought in for the ASW11 poker event, see everyone there. -Brian
ReplyBrian, I saw you signed up. It will be great to have you. If you want to email me some events, contacts, and pages in that MLM world, I would love to see what they are doing. I find studying all of it so fascinating! Your right, it sure does take hard work. If you combine that with what this or that person figures out here or there, the results are breathtaking. I love being one of the few people that jumps from one of these worlds to the next. 🙂
ReplyKern and company make no secret of the fact they work together as a syndicate. It’s smart marketing. Back in my days as a sales rep, I would meet weekly with other sales professionals and we would swap leads. We all ended up cross selling each others products and services to our customers. That’s what these guys do, just on a larger scale.
I am not neccessarily a fan of the “make money online” products in that space, but jsut watching how they work is interesting.
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