12 minutes that can turn your economic outlook upside down

Now the question is, how can each of us enact something of a gift economy in our business? Is it possible? Or just a marketing gimmick?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments box.

  Download the Interview with Mark Silver of Heart of Business (MP3, 14 MB)

“If I raise my prices, I’ll feel greedy. Or no one will hire me. And what if I’m not that good?”

“If I lower my prices, I’ll feel defeated. I’ll attract the wrong sort of client. But what if that’s the only way to get business?”

Either (or both!) of these feel familiar?

I’ve struggled with pricing for much of my business career. For some reason, money has always been a fraught subject for me. (Not sure why – I grew up comfortably middle class, had some nice stuff, and went to an expensive college.)

And when it comes to pricing, all my issues bubble to a rolling boil.

I’m really good at overthinking stuff like that!

So I was delighted to explore the topic of pricing – and other business issues – from a spiritual perspective with my new friend and teacher, Mark Silver. Mark runs a training company called “Heart of Business,” and he’s a master at putting the nuts and bolts of business into a truly inspiring context.

We talked for an hour last month. And today I got around to editing and uploading the audio.

If you’re squeamish about concepts like “heart” and “The Divine,” this interview might be a bit of a challenge. Even so, I urge to you keep an open mind and give a listen.

Here’s that download link again.

If you want more from Mark, visit HeartofBusiness.com.

Turned on or turned off? Inspired or confused? Got a different philosophy? Let me know what you think in the comments box below.

Having gone through a few hundred AdWords For Dummies survey results in the past two days, I’m reminded how difficult it is to get going online.

In this 8 minute video, I share your top challenges (see if they sound familiar to you) and humbly offer a path from overwhelm to peace and productivity.

Here’s the 90-minute audio download I mentioned in the video:

Right-click to download the mp3 here

And please join the conversation by leaving a comment below!

Howie

I just interviewed Alex Baisley, creator of the Big Dream Program. Originally, this was to be a Ring of Fire exclusive, but I was so moved by Alex’s words that I decided to make a gift of this interview to the entire universe.

It’s all about living big, expressing our dreams, and losing the distinction between work and life so that we can turn our entire existence into a giant symphony of our true nature.

Not a keyword or ad group in sight… ;)

Right-click to download the mp3 here. It’s 88 minutes long, so probably best to download to an mp3 player and go for a long walk in a beautiful place.

You can visit Alex’s site at http://BigDreamProgram.com. Look at the top navigation for the Calling Workshop. For the price of your name and email, you can watch it online.

And please posts your comments when you’ve finished listening. Let’s keep this conversation going.

Search marketers are well aware of the psychology of the searcher: impatient, unforgiving, narrowly focused, and extremely goal-directed.

That's why we focus on hyper-relevance of ads and landing pages, because we know that the searcher has no tolerance for anything that doesn't advance the cause of their search.

But is it good to live life from the position of searcher? What are the costs of being in "Search Mode" so much of the time?

As entrepreneurs, we're always being encouraged to "go for what we want," to be singularly focused on our goals, and to always strive for success.

Awesome.

But unless we're careful, that puts us in never-ending "search mode." And living from that place has costs.

Here are my heart-felt thoughts on the subject. Agree or disagree, please post a comment below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GGPz-aXOeA

Perry Marshall's July newsletter was a brilliant meditation on fear, and how it can paralyze us and keep us small.

I've had some experience with this.

I once spent 5 hours hugging a tree outside girl's bunk B21 at camp because I was so terrified to ask Cindy to the square dance (and her friends had already told me that she wanted to go with me).

I always played in the orchestra in school musicals, despite my burning desire to appear on stage, because of the fear that I might not get the lead role.

And that's just the stuff so old that I don't mind sharing it here.

But you see how that kind of fear can infect every aspect of a person's life. Keep their career small. Keep their social life timid. Keep the potentiality of their life force caged and cramped.

How Not to Conquer Fear

Most of the self-help advice I come across in the entrepreneurial space urges us to become bold and powerful. To claim our power. To throw off the shackles of fear.

To focus on the positive. To set motivating goals. To visualize success. To model successful people. To repeat affirmations. To "fake it 'til you make it."

The trouble with these approaches, at least for me, is that they don't get at the root of the fear.

Instead, they're like constantly pruning the limbs and branches, while the underground roots grow and grow and grow.

"Don't hang out with negative people" is a common bit of advice:

"You're an entrepreneur, a mover and shaker, a treasure-seeker. The little people in your life are always going to try to drag you down. Don't listen to them. Be bold. Surround yourself with fellow treasure-seekers."

Like all half-truths, it's, well, half-true.

True because your environment is the most powerful force shaping your thoughts and behaviors. If you live in a beehive, you'll end up buzzing and waggling your butt.

But false because it misses the point that you carry a whole steering committee of fear and negativity around with you wherever you go.

That steering committee isn't going to shut up just because you plug your ears and go "La la la" every time it seconds a motion.

It isn't going to retire just because you start injecting daily doses of Tony Robbins into your headstream.

It's going to go even deeper underground. Where it will sabotage your every attempt at greatness and joy with even greater effectiveness. Because the voice you don't notice is the one with the greatest influence.

Going to the Source of the Fear

>The first thing to realize is that the fear is not your enemy. It's not something to hate, resent, or distance yourself from.

Instead, it was a rational response to some situation that you weren't able to handle at the time. 

As Gavin de Becker points out in his book The Gift of Fear, there is real survival value in fear.

He's referring to physical survival, but when we're young, we can't tell the difference between real death and ego death.

Getting yelled at, or blamed, or manipulated, or physically or sexually abused, or neglected, or dismissed, or misheard – these all, to a greater or lesser extent, feel like complete negations of ourselves. 

Our young selves cry out for help, and what emerges is a set of strategies that will keep us from feeling hurt like that again.

Things like:

1. Be hard and don't care about others so they can't hurt you
2. Cut yourself down first so others don't have the opportunity
3. Stay small and nobody will notice you
4. Stay in control of everything at all times so nothing bad can happen
5. Act like a victim so people feel sorry for you and don't hurt you

And the thing is, these coping mechanisms were the absolute best we could do at the time. Modern shamans refer to these mechanisms as "soul loss," thinking of them literally as a splitting off of a piece of our soul, out of conscious awareness, to a place where it could no longer be hurt by the outside world. 

Safe from the world, and no longer accessible to ourselves. 

Replaced by voices inside our heads that instruct us to keep engaging in a child's strategy for safety.

Those voices that no longer serve our higher purposes, but keep plugging away based on an old self-preservation program that was written by our infant- or toddler-self.

Ignoring the Fear Voices

The last thing we want to do is pay conscious attention to the fear voices. The voices themselves are cunning, and do everything they can to keep us oblivious to them. They know they are more effective that way.

So instead of facing the fear programming inside, we typically lash outward at the world.

We see danger everywhere we look. (The entire TV news industry is simply an externalized form of that impulse on a large scale.)

We blame circumstances, or other people, or the economy, or our upbringing, for what's wrong. Collectively we look for scapegoats – immigrants, politicians, religious and ethnic groups. 

And of course none of this works. We can feel better for a minute when we make ourselves the victim, or superior to someone else, but we soon need another strong hit to drown out the voices telling us that we're nothing, that what's wrong with us is unfixable and terminal and proof of our total unworthiness.

Embracing the Fear Voices

Paradoxically, the fear voices that have been our ruin for so long are also the source of our salvation. 

The voices actually create the same internal experience as the events they are trying to protect us from. When we learn to stay with, then tolerate, then accept the feelings, we've just inoculated ourselves against the very thing we thought we feared.

As my coach Christian Mickelsen points out, the only thing we really fear is how an event is going to make us feel. And with the fear voices, we already feel that way, all the time!

But staying with them, not trying to push them away with positive thinking or can-do affirmations, and just letting them wash over us – is the first step in healing. 

The feelings that we've been fearing for so long don't kill us, it turns out.

Instead, they give us a chance to reassess. To turn off the old security system that is terrorizing us from the inside, and install something that makes more sense for who we are today.

The Cave You Are Afraid to Enter

Joseph Campbell taught, "Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center." 

We tend to think of the bad stuff that's happened to us as "unfair" or "unfortunate." But it's really a template for the arc of our life – this is the ultimate underlying mission, to heal this wound, to correct this misperception, to come into relationship with Truth.

And when we do this for ourselves, we do it for the whole world. There's a great liberation in facing our fears and living life at the edge.

As Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

When we lose the need to protect ourselves from failure, from criticism, from unfairness, from helplessness; when we can live without the need to be right, or in control; when we can be ourselves, open and undefended – then we're free.

The Ultimate Entrepreneurial Freedom

That's the freedom that we're really after, as entrepreneurs and human beings. 

The other kinds of freedom that we talk about all the time – freedom from a job, freedom to travel, freedom to set our own hours – are just proxies, just metaphors for that all-encompassing human freedom to be ourselves.

Without the constant courtroom drama of prosecutor and witness and defense attorney and judge and jury.

The real gift of our wounds is this opportunity to transcend them, the opportunity that lies before us in every moment. 

Wherever we encounter the pain and the fear, there is the cave that beckons us, again and again, to lie down and not be afraid.

Your thoughts welcome – please share your comments below.

Ball #1: Jabulani

A bunch of the world’s soccer goalkeepers are having fits about the new Adidas Jabulani ball. As the World Cup approaches, the goalies are near-unanimous in their complaints: Too light, too curvy, too sleek, too slippery, too unpredictable.

Here are some quotes about the Jabulani from the goalkeepers of several teams playing in the Cup this summer:

Hugo Lloris of France: “A disaster.”

Iker Casillas of Spain: “Like a beach ball.”

Gianluigi Buffon of Italy: “Shameful.”

David James of England: “Dreadful.”

Fernando Muslera of Uruguay: “The worst I’ve ever played with.”

Ball #2: The Worst Call in Baseball History

And on Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game (only 20 of these games have been pitched in the history of Major League Baseball) when first base umpire Jim Joyce completely blew it and incorrectly called a runner safe with two outs in the ninth.

Galarraga’s response at being cheated out of a history-making achievement? “[Joyce] probably felt more bad than me. Nobody’s perfect.”

Wow.

While the goalkeepers are already making excuses for the goals they haven’t yet allowed, Galarraga responded with more grace and integrity than I can imagine.

Arguing with Reality

Here’s my confession: While I would love to say I would have reacted like Galarraga, I act like a whiny goalkeeper much more often.

It’s so easy, after all, to blame the world for what it’s withholding from me.

Even when it’s a patent absurdity, such as a soccer ball that will challenge all teams equally.

But as Mick Jagger and Buddha so wisely remind us, You can’t always get what you want.

And as one of my teachers, Byron Katie puts it, “arguing with reality” is a sure cause of misery.

After all, the Jabulani ball is equally bad for everyone. Kind of like the other excuses I like to trot out when the world doesn’t deliver exactly what I want: the market, the economy, the labor market, the demands on my time.

Unless I pay attention, I can become a veritable font of excuses that can keep me victimized, aggrieved, and helpless.

Accepting Reality

Contrast that attitude with Galarraga’s, whose near-instant acceptance of the irreversible bad call has made him synonymous with hugeness of spirit.

He showed us all how to make friends with reality.

And by “reality” I don’t mean anything more than what is actually going on right now. As opposed to the constant comparison with the story of how things should go.

Suppose Galarraga had done the “normal” thing and yelled and protested and complained and told the world he had been robbed.

Would that have changed anything?

Clearly not, as it didn’t work when the Tigers’ manager. 

Here’s what it would have changed: Galarraga’s experience of the event. As it unfolded, he ended the game with a big smile, a huge ovation, and what looks suspiciously to me like inner peace. A tantrum would have erased all that good stuff.

Plus, as my friend Brian pointed out, his story has become a resonant social fable far beyond baseball. Millions of people with no interest in baseball admire and will remember him.

How many of you can name the men who pitched the first two perfect games this season? If you’re not a baseball fan, I bet you can’t. (FYI: I can’t. Despite being a baseball nerd in my teams, I quit cold turkey after the 1978 season, reasoning that for a Yankee fan, life could simply not get any better.)

The Power of the Invisible Sun

Just to add a bit of irony to the goalkeepers’ moaning, the World Cup is being played for the first time in South Africa, a land with great energy and great challenges. I spent two months in South Africa this past year, and I’ve seen enough of childhood poverty to last me a lifetime.

While the high-tech Jabulani balls are slipping through fingers in goalkeepers’ recurring nightmares, many South African kids dream of owning a soccer ball that consists of something more rugged and aerodynamic than rubbish and garbage bags held together with string.

Photographer and philanthropist Bobby Sager, who took the above photo, teamed up with former Police frontman Sting and inventor Tim Jahnigen to create an indestructible soccer ball.

Instead of a bladder that can be punctured, the new ball can be stabbed with a knife, run over with a car, and rolled over broken glass without any problem.

The bright yellow balls, inscribed with the words “Hope is a Game Changer,” are being handed out by the thousands all over the world.

Why? Sting answers, “This is instant joy. Kids need fun, too. Imagine living in a refugee camp. I mean, what is there to look forward to? Very little. This is concrete. Very, very substantial.”

(To support this effort, go to The Power of the Invisible Sun.)

My fantasy is that one day a child who grew up in a South African informal settlement will grow up to be goalkeeper for the South African national team. I bet you he – or she – will be very happy with whatever ball is used.

And that, like Armando Galarraga, he or she will realize that the greatest victory is not the final score, but the way we conduct ourselves no matter what life throws at us.

So from my own humble place of learning, my gratitude goes out to my teachers: Armando, Bobby, Sting, Tim, and Byron.

May I be inspired to accept reality with grace and confront it with courage.

And so may we all.

Every marketer needs to study this video:

Start with Why, not What.

What you do simply serves as proof of what you believe.

Enjoy.

In The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle wonders at the sudden and inexplicable success of the Russian women's tennis program over the past decade.

The real reason was not something new in the water, or a brand new training facility, or anything you might expect. Instead, it was the international success of 17-year-old Anna Kournikova, whose prowess in tournaments was matched only by her supermodel looks. She quickly became the most-downloaded athlete in history.

All of a sudden, Coyle writes, thousands of young Russian girls had a role model. More than that, they had a desirable future to which they could aspire. I want to be like her, they all thought. She's like me. I'm like her. I can be that too. If I practice hard, for years. I'd better get busy.

Coyle refers to this effect as ignition. Just as a tank of gas won't move a Ferrari – or a Vespa – without a spark to set the engine running, a well of potential skill and practice-energy will never manifest in talent without a spark.

Are You Good at Math? When's Your Birthday?

In a study described by Coyle, researchers had a bunch of college students read through some magazine articles. One of the articles was about a student, Nathan Jackson, who discovered he enjoyed math, applied himself in college, and was now a successful and happy math professor.

Half of the students read the article as is. The other half were fed a teeny fib: Nathan's birthday was altered to be the same as theirs. Then the researchers tested the students' willingness to spend time working on a math problem that had no solution.

The results: "the birthday-matched group had significantly more positive attitudes about math, and persisted a whopping 65 percent longer on the insoluble solution."

Even though each student was working on the problem alone, in a closed room, the perceived connection with Nathan Jackson – as trivial as a shared birthday – was enough to change their self-identity about themselves as mathematicians.

Why I No Longer Completely Despise "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus

For many years, I've gone to online marketing conferences where some of the speakers earn their living by pitching their courses, workshops, and coaching programs from the stage. I've always cringed at the long "Lazy Loser" presentations. They go something like this:

1. PowerPoint shows presenter 3 years ago, in a ratty basement room with a Pentium 286 computer with socks strewn over the monitor and a moth-eaten couch in the background

"Here I am in my sister's basement after losing my job as a pizza delivery guy because I used to pick the mushrooms off the pizza and eat them myself."

2. PowerPoint shifts to presenter 2 years ago, dead expression on his face as he sits in a depressing cubicle

"And here I am working 29 hours a day at my sister's husband's debt collection company, processing the paperwork that would repossess grandma's dentures."

3. PowerPoint shows presenter with arms around babe of a girlfriend, in front of mansion with expensive car, on a private jet, in a speedboat, flashing a Rolex

"But now, even though I'm unemployable and not that smart and really lazy, I make 3 millions dollars a year using this formula that I discovered by accident, and in about 20 minutes will tell you how to buy for the amazingly low price of $3995, but for you, today only, because [insert name of seminar host here] twisted my arm, it's only $1995 and the first ten people who climb over the heads of their fellow audience members get an additional bonus of every DVD set I've ever made, no matter how long ago."

And I would sit in the audience, cringing, wondering if I was the only person in the room not drinking the Kool-Aid, silently pitying the fools parting with their money and condemning the slick huckster for vacuuming the last dollars out of the pockets of gullible, desperate people.

"That Ain't Me, No That Ain't Me. I Ain't No Senator's Son, Son, Son"

But here's the thing: I was judging because the story wasn't mine. It wasn't an invitation to me to become a great online marketing success.

I've never been fired from pizza delivery; I've never slept in my sister's basement or worked for anyone I hated for more than a couple of weeks. My narrative is different. I went to an Ivy League university. My parents bought me my first car. I was never a slacker, or poor, or hopeless. At least not in that way.

I was exposed to this rags-to-riches narrative so many times over my first few years in online marketing that I came to believe I was doomed precisely because I didn't have such a story in my past. Unconsciously, I was hoping to sink that low so I could finally find the motivation to succeed. (If I hadn't been supporting a couple of kids at that point, I might have gone there.)

But here's what I was missing: the people who were leaping over tables and chairs to throw their money at the guru had suddenly been ignited. His story was their story. Regardless of whether the specifics of his program or course or software or workshop were sound, a whole bunch of people could now see themselves as successes.

If he could do it, they were thinking to themselves, then I can do it too. I'm not as hopeless as he was…

And when I think about how I was groomed for success my whole life – there was never any doubt that I would be highly educated, very successful (probably a lawyer), and connected to the right people as a birthright – I realize the importance, for people who didn't have that privileged childhood, of seeing someone just like them who had, against all odds, succeeded.

But here's my beef: the Lazy Losers are abusing that ignition, and in most cases, squandering it. I'll explain how by comparing their approach with the one I take with Camp Checkmate.

The Camp Checkmate Approach: Hard Work, Deep Practice

So you've probably heard by now that I'm holding an online marketing workshop, called Camp Checkmate, in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010.If you're hoping for someone to do the Rags to Riches dance to sell you some course or coaching program, you will be disappointed.

So why should you attend, and what does this have to do with Anna Kournikova, Nathan Jackson, and "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus?

Because it turns out that ignition is not enough. Ignition does not ignite talent, or skill, or capability. Ignition ignites the willingness to put in long hours of practice, to master the skills that produce the talent.

"Better Get Busy"

According to Coyle, ignition sends the following message to the brain:

"Hey, that could be you. Better Get Busy."

Busy? Busy doing what, exactly?

In Ten Thousand Hours, You Could Be Yo-Yo Ma

In researching the best performers in the world, in fields as diverse as music, sports, politics, literature, and dance, Coyle found an almost immutable law of talent: when a person practiced deeply for 10,000 hours (roughly 3 hours a day for 10 years), they became a world champion.

The 10,000 hours was not only necessary, it was sufficient. Regardless of "innate" ability or genius or anything mysterious given by God. A human who dedicates herself to mastery for that long will achieve world-class status.

Ignition is the seed event that starts the deep practice ball rolling. But ignition without the subsequent years of effort means nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because dashed hopes make it all the more difficult to believe in yourself when the next ignition occurs.

"Lazy Loser" Gurus Short-Circuit the Mastery Process

The big problem with the online marketing gurus setting expectations that anyone can achieve their level of professional and financial success by continuing to be lazy is that it just isn't true. They are masters at ignition: "Hey, that could be me."

But their need to make a buck short-circuits the second half of the equation: "Better get busy."

So the ignition is "spent," not on practice, but on a roll of the dice that the magic wand offered by the guru (at a hefty price) is enough. All that is needed. Brains and effort optional. 

So no matter how good their material or how rigorous their training, most of their customers are already predisposed to failure because of their fantasyland expectations.

And the gurus blame it on the lazy idiots who don't even take the shrink wrap off the DVDs.

Of course, when we reflect soberly, we realize that any strategy that requires neither brains nor effort is completely unsustainable. If it's so easy, anyone can do it, and the reward for that activity falls to minimum wage by the law of supply and demand. 

But in the heat of the moment, when all our "primal cues" about scarcity and exclusivity and belonging and identity are being invoked by a charismatic speaker wearing a watch we could never afford, we forget all that and respond, as nature intended, by igniting and following the path of least resistance.

Camp Checkmate – Two Days of Deep Practice

At Camp Checkmate, there are no shortcuts to mastery. What we're really working on, for two whole days, is the fundamental core of marketing: how to connect with our prospects so completely that they decide to like us and trust us with their futures.

We use simple and powerful tools to achieve this connection: the Google search results page, the Checkmate Matrix, Sean D'Souza's Reverse Testimonial Strategy, Perry Marshall's Diary Insight, Ken McCarthy's Testimonial Factory and Positioning work, Ben Jesson and Karl Blank's Objection/Counter-Objection Technique, and a bunch of exercises I've borrowed from the world of improvisational theater. 

But we are working, and working hard.

And it's the kind of work that simply doesn't happen when we're back home, in our offices, running our day-to-day businesses. Humans are social animals, and we take our cues on how to act from the other people in our environment. If you want to become a world-class direct marketer, then you have to spend time hanging out with other people practicing the same skills at the same level of commitment.

Camp Checkmate is a Talent Hotbed

In The Talent Code, Coyle writes about "Talent Hotbeds" – for example, a ramshackle tennis club in Moscow with one indoor court that has produced more top-twenty female players than the US. Or the Island of Curacao, whose Little League baseball team has made it to the Little League World Series semifinals six out of the last eight years.

Talent Hotbeds arise when two conditions are met:

1. There are enough environmental cues that motivate ongoing practice
2. The practice is done the right way – with learners struggling to attain skills just beyond their reach

The effectiveness of Camp Checkmate – as testified to by the reactions of participants, including direct marketing superstars like Drayton Bird and Perry Marshall – arises from the ways in which you are forced to practice skills of empathy and assertiveness, at first not on your business, but on other people's. 

Marketing is hard. Damn hard. 

So the task of the serious marketing educator is to chunk it down into manageable skills that a person can struggle with and succeed at. The most significant chunking at Camp Checkmate consists of solving other people's business problems before you address your own.

When you watch the video testimonials of Camp Checkmate participants, you hear the words "fun" and "easy" and "creative" a lot. Please realize that's just their perception. It's not the truth – at least not the "easy" part.

They're actually doing hard work, all of them. I know, because I watch the groups grapple with the games and activities. They're sweating out there.

But they don't realize it, because they're "in the zone." Time flies, insights come, and by the end of the exercise participants have developed new neuronal pathways that simply cannot form without this kind of deep practice.

Camp Checkmate is really an old-school gym, building marketing muscles. 

Through practice, repetition, and failure. 

Very unglamorous, yet wickedly effective.

The Two Easiest-Hard Days of Your Life

Look, I know it's a pain the butt to travel to Chicago for two days of workshop. Unless you live in Chicagoland, you'll have to fly out the day before, and you may even stay an extra night afterwards. 

And I know it's not cheap – even if Camp Checkmate were free, you'd still be paying hundreds of dollars on airfare and hotel. And Camp Checkmate is decidedly not free. In fact, it gets more expensive the longer you wait.

But here's why all that is a good thing:

The people you will be hanging out with all share your level of commitment. 

By virtue of their decision to turn up, they're contributing to the Online Marketing Talent Hotbed that is, in fact, the hallmark of every great seminar, workshop and mastermind group I've ever attended. 

At most marketing seminars, the networking is the best part, but it's the least scheduled and intentional part.

At Camp Checkmate, working in small groups with fellow campers is 90% of the experience. The others are coming to work with YOU. And you're coming to work with them. 

All I'm doing is attracting the right people and creating a structure and process that fosters deep practice and mastery.

Why Camp Checkmate Feels So Easy

I'm really proud of this bit, but the truth is I hit upon it by accident.

Because everyone is working on other people's businesses, the happy side benefit is that you will come home from Camp Checkmate with an amazing quality and quantity of new marketing material, ready to test.

New ads. New headlines. New landing page copy. New content for autoresponder and broadcast emails. New positioning. And new ideas for the visionary improvement of your current business.

And – I can guarantee this – you would never have come up with this material on your own. Not at this stage.

After Camp Checkmate, you'll be significantly better at coming up with it on your own. Unless you're Drayton Bird or Perry Marshall or Ken McCarthy or Sean D'Souza, someone who has already put in the 10,000 hours required of world-class mastery. For folks at that level, Camp Checkmate is like skill maintenance and refinement. But for the rest of us – and I include myself here – the Camp Checkmate experience definitely raises our game.

But in the process, we get our marketing done for us by people who can see what we can't because they're standing outside of our business, seeing our customers and competitors objectively, and with fresh eyes.

Ready to Crack Your Own Marketing Talent Code?

Here's the link to register for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010, and reserve your seat:

Single Payment $2497 $1497 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Three Payments of $866 $532 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Got questions about Camp Checkmate? 

Open Q&A phone session today, April 30, from 1:35-2:30pm Eastern Time:

Phone: 1-219-509-8222
Access Code: 233080#

It's an open line, so don't ask questions that you don't want the world to hear. 

If I think Camp Checkmate is for you, I'll tell you. And if I think it's not for you, I'll tell you that as well. Camp Checkmate will fill up, so it's just self-interest that I would discourage people who might not be a good fit. I don't like giving refunds, and I don't want people to show up who aren't able to contribute to their fellow campers' success.

Wishing you ignition and deep practice,
Howie

Beekeeper Sue Hubbell writes in A Book of Bees:

" For 15 years now I have worked on such familiar terms with the bees that when I see them down the river, or listen to them at night, I know exactly what they are doing. I now can understand a little bit, though not nearly as much as I thought I did the first year I worked with them. They have forced me to realize that my senses and powers of observation are very limited.

"My city friends know well enough what I do here during the season; it may seem strange work to them, but it is undisputedly work; what I do during the slack times is harder for them to figure out: "organizing my ignorance" is perhaps as good a description as any."

Marketers have a lot in common with beekeepers; when we first start working with our market we think we know a lot more about them than we really do. The longer we engage with prospects, the better we get at figuring out how to speak to them and how to serve them, but we also realize how much we still don't know.

It's ironic, perhaps, that our increasing wisdom highlights our ignorance. But it's by exploring those places of ignorance, those little nooks and crannies where we don't know what we need to know, that we develop true deep market insight.

Organizing our ignorance

In online marketing especially, we like to think of ourselves as macho cowboys writing the great sales letter, making the great pitch, actively pursuing wealth. What's less obvious and less sexy work is the organization of our ignorance so that we may begin to close the gap between what we don't know and what we need to know in order to empathize and serve.

Simply sitting – meditating, stewing, imagining, whatever word makes us feel most OK with the inaction – with our confusion, our blankness, our unexamined assumptions, begins to allow for whole new levels of reality to emerge.

As marketers, we tend to rush in to answer those questions: to conduct a survey, to perform some market analysis, to take a wild stab or a wild guess at the answer. Doing something sure feels good; it feels like good old hard work. And hard work, we're told by our culture, makes us wealthy.

But it's a much more receptive, feminine act of simply being in the mystery that allows for the subsequent active work to be most effective.

Sitting in the Questions

So this isn't an article about how to do market research. Instead, it's an invitation to ask ourselves a series of humbling questions on a regular basis:

• "What might not be true here?"
• "What am I not seeing?"
• "What else could be going on here?"

Sitting with these questions, perhaps with a journal open in front of us, or maybe a set of colorful markers and a big pad of art paper,  might be the most profitable "nonwork" that we do all year.

Deep Curiosity is More Powerful than Knowledge

Once we have a map and a feel for the fertile terrain of the dark holes in our understanding, we can then begin the process of discovery with a new clarity and reverence for the ultimate mystery that is our prospect; the ultimate mystery that is every human being we may encounter on our journey.

No matter how well we think we know a person, be it a customer, a colleague, a life partner, a child, or even ourselves, the ultimate form of respect is a recognition of the deep mystery, the unknowable within them. Marketing, in its purest and deepest form, is not about knowing everything about the inner life of our prospect. Instead, it's being willing to approach them with fresh eyes every single time, to allow for deeper connection and communion.

"Slow Down" Marketing

If you'd like to experience a balanced environment, in which active and receptive forces dance in harmony to give you powerful and deep insight into your market, please consider attending Camp Checkmate in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010. While I don't tout the two days as "Slow Down" marketing, in a way that's exactly what goes on. We slow down our own monkey minds, get curious about reality, and start making connections that will seem obvious once we've made them. 

Read about Camp Checkmate, and sign up for the free pre-Camp training series here.