You Can’t Learn to Ride a Bicycle at a Seminar
I received a newsletter from Perry Marshall today (author of the Definitive Guide to Google AdWords) and he shared some really good insights that I thought I’d pass on.
“You can’t learn to ride a bicycle at a seminar.”
It really doesn’t matter what aspect of life we’re talking about, there’s an enormous difference between learning from a guru and actually doing it yourself. The bottom-line truth about really talented marketers comes down to one word.
Just one.
That word is: TESTING.
If you don’t test - if you don’t develop an idea, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes, with hard numbers and percentages - you really don’t know anything.
If you DO test - then you know what you know. And nobody can argue with you. That’s all there is to it.
Does long copy work or is short copy better? Should I have a sales letter website or a traditional one? Should I price this at $500 or $1000? Should I use a soft-sell approach or is hard-sell better?
The answer to every question is: test and find out.
The point is that you can read and learn and read and learn and never really know what you should be doing. It all comes down to action. It comes down to being willing to try something even if there is a possibility of it failing.
Have you ever been held back because you thought that something might not work? Have you ever been afraid to put $100 into a marketing campaign because there was a chance that you might make the money back, but there was also a chance that you might not?
I think all of us (myself included) have been in any of these situations before. The lesson that we have to learn at some point or another is that at times you have to be willing to take the step, even though it might fail. And even then, you can still learn from what happened and do better on the next step you take!
