The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [67]
I don’t think what I achieved would be that difficult for anyone else to achieve. It’s available to anyone who wants to put some time into learning good direct-response copywriting.
Like Eben and Dan Kennedy and Frank Kern, I didn’t have any formal “credentials” to do this consulting. I didn’t have an MBA in marketing, or even a BA in business. What I had, instead, is something infinitely more valuable: a growing portfolio of real-world results. If you can help people get the results they want, and you can show them proof that you’ve helped other people get great results, people just don’t give a damn about your credentials. They care about results.
While you can’t go out and practice law or medicine or psychotherapy or engineering without academic credentials, for most other fields, boosting up your formal credentials is absolutely the wrong thing to be focused on. Focus instead on learning how to get results, real-world results that people actually care about, and which speak to deep desires, wants, and needs. Your competitors can wipe their asses with their formal credentials.
■ A QUICK-AND-EASY GUIDE TO TEACHING YOURSELF MARKETING IN TWO MONTHS
OK, so you’re sold. You’re ready to learn high-quality, high-integrity marketing. Well, how do you begin? This guide will show you how to start. You’ll be amazed at how many free or low-cost resources there are out there for you, and how quickly you can begin putting your learning into action and get real-world results.
Step 1. Create an e-mail address that is not your main e-mail address and does not go to your main inbox. I’m going to be asking you to sign up for a lot of different free e-mail newsletters, and they will flood your e-mail account, so make sure it’s not your main account or inbox!
Step 2. Go to the following websites. Not only should you read everything you can get your hands on in the archives of these sites, but you should also sign up for the free e-mail newsletter available on each site, with the e-mail address you created in Step 1.
You should sign up for these newsletters because all of the people I’m going to recommend are master copywriters. You can get an entire education in marketing and copywriting just by comparing and contrasting the different styles of these marketers. Once you begin diving into some of the resources I mention above, you’ll see that there is no “one” way to market, no “one” tone you need to adopt. There are so many different tones and styles here, from Dan Kennedy’s over-the-top hard sell, to the wickedly funny copy of Marie Forleo and exercise guru Matt Furey, to Jonathan Fields’s super-sweet soft sell, and everything in between. If you are offended by a particular style, or it’s just not for you, then find a marketer you vibe with more and learn from him or her instead. (All of these newsletters include links at the bottom, which allow you to remove yourself from them if you no longer wish to receive them.)
Once you’ve exposed yourself to lots of different styles (to see the range of what’s out there), you’ll probably find one or two teachers or sites whose values and sensibilities match your own. Start focusing your energy on learning from them—while never fully losing awareness of what others are doing out there as well, for diverse ideas and perspectives.
(If you know how to do such things in your e-mail program, set up filters or rules so that each marketer’s e-mails go to a different mailbox or folder—it’s just easier to manage that way.)
Note: Many of the people I recommend here, including Eben, Marie Forleo, and Jonathan Fields, are personal friends. In no case am I receiving any commission, payment, or other benefit for recommending