The Maverick Marketer Blog

I’m back in the office today and Hayden is running around like a mad man, so things are getting back to something like normal at my house… thanks again for all the prayers, support and kinds words (I am working my way through the emails to reply individually).

And, since I’m back in the office, I wanted to tell you about a revelation I had the other day. See, my friend Ray McNally gave me a DVD of ‘Door to Door’, the Bill Porter story, to watch and I did last weekend when I was up till 3am while Hayden was in the hospital.

Bill Porter is a door to door salesman who started in the early 1950’s with a company called Watkins and sold soap and other household goods to his neighborhood. Played by one of my favorite actors, William H. Macy, Porter had an extra ordinary career and that’s about all I can tell you without giving away too much of the movie.

And, I do recommend that you go to Blockbuster and rent it… because as entrepreneurs we all have to overcome failure and find our way to success… and Bill Porter did that in spite of having cerebral palsy. I’ve done door to door sales and I can tell you, my hat’s off to Mr. Porter.

His is a true, heartwarming story that will give you a reason to appreciate the entrepreneur lifestyle at a deeper level. In the United States, there is a prejudice against salespeople, and yet, Bill Porter declares in the movie ‘I love being a salesman’, and you learn why.

It’s actually beautiful to see this guy sell something he believes in and watch the impact he has on the lives around him.

As an Internet Marketer you face a similar challenge to the door to door salesperson because, like the ‘unwanted visitor’ at the front door, your lowly email is at first suspected of being spam and faces a ‘virtual slammed door’ as your email is sent to the trash bin (the good news is that your email doesn’t take the rejection quite as personally — though it never feels good to send out a mailing and get no sales.).

If you want to learn how to build a relationship with your subscribers, watch ‘Door to Door’, because you’ll see it done by a master who takes pride in his selling in the face of huge obstacles that most of us don’t have.

On that subject, let me say that especially in the early days, every entrepreneur faces an overwhelming urge to quit.

Especially in Internet Marketing, there are a lot of technical and foreign things to learn in addition to the art of selling your products and services. If you’ve ever felt like nothing’s going right and it’s time to hang up your hat… watch ‘Door to Door’ for some perspective.

In the mean time, I’ve got another short movie that you’ll find inspiring (click here and watch it). A few posts ago I told you about Mike Filsaime’s viral marketing success story… and shared a ‘leaked chapter’ from his upcoming course, Butterfly Marketing, which launches on January 31st.

What’s the movie about? It features Mike naked.

Well, it features live video of Mike’s Paypal and Stormpay accounts… fully exposed with good months and bad all laid on the table. No BS, just the naked truth. I think you’ll find the clip inspiring.

With that in mind, I’m still trying to line up a specific date for Mike and I to do a call for you to answer your questions about viral traffic and the whole story behind how he went from high pressure day job to highly satisfying daily Paypal deposits in such a short time. I’ll keep you posted on that.

This video is a bold and Maverick strategy because Mike’s gone beyond the ’screen shot’ approach, which can be ‘doctored’ and gone straight to unedited screencam video of his actual account.

If you think about it, a guy who built a list of 300,000 and claims an income of nearly seven figures in just three years of being online is going to attract some naysayers.

And so will you if the moment you ask someone to buy something from you online. Now, doing a screen cam video of your PayPal account may not fit the context of your business at all, but using audio or video can be quite compelling ‘proof’ and is a proven strategy.

Here’s the key: Mike is launching a course about how to make a ton of money with viral traffic… so a video proving Mike’s income is a sharp idea because it demonstrates proof he knows his stuff.

If you’re offering a line of nutritional products, for example, your key promise is perhaps the health benefits of your products… or your knowledge of the choices based on your expertise. You could include audio testimonials from your satisfied customers on your website. This would provide proof that your expertise or products did what you say… helped your customers.

If you want to use video, perhaps you could do a before and after video of your own experience… this has been done effectively where the results are visual, like with weightloss or skin conditions.

Obviously, before and after works well for beauty products, too.

But here’s what I want you to take away from this example: it’s powerful because it reveals the naked truth about Mike’s offer (and business) in an irrefutable and positive way… and the closer your marketing gets to the naked truth, the more YOUR prospects will believe you and buy from you.

So go check out Mike’s video at http://www.maverickmarketer.com/butterfly because it illustrates the power of building a responsive list and Mike’s effective strategies in a dramatic way.

And by the way, if your numbers in your business don’t look quite like Mike’s right now… remember that HIS numbers didn’t always look like that either. And then think of Bill Porter… patience and persistence are entrepreneurial principles to live by.

The naked truth about marketing and being in business is that sometimes you have to just keep at it until you hit your numbers. You have to prove yourself to your prospects before they will buy… and a little naked truth sharing on your part can really help close the deal. And as Bill Porter showed, pushing beyond your comfort zone is the key to success.

I guess what I like about Mike’s story is that he figured it out in his first year online. He’s definitely a Maverick Marketer worth watching closely. He’s doing all the right things for his product launch.

Find out why here for yourself…

- Craig

Two year olds are amazing creatures.

The last several days have been an ordeal in many ways and the one who has bounced back the fastest is Hayden. I continue to get wonderful emails asking how he is doing and I’ve put together a page for you to see some pictures and get an update on all that has happened since my last post.

I must warn you, though, this page further proves that I am not a web designer

However, after all the wonderful emails and comments on my last post asking for prayers, I didn’t want to keep ya’ll waiting while I figured out how to make the site pretty.

Click here to see Hayden’s Thank You Page.

- Craig

P.S. I’m only ‘half’ back in the office today… but tomorrow I’ve got something cool to tell you about and a revelation that I came to in the last few days. Stay tuned…

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote asking for prayers for my son Hayden. He’s two and a half now and all too accustomed to going to see doctors.

As you can see from the picture taken last weekend, he looks happy and healthy and after tomorrow’s surgery, I’m hoping he’ll be just as happy and healthy on the inside.

Since everyone asks, "what’s wrong with him?" I’ll give you a brief sketch… he was born with a fairly common condition where urine can reflux back up into his kidneys (causing infection) and the doc’s tried to fix the problem surgically last February. Well, they got the job 50% right, with enough of a problem still remaining on one side that they want another shot at it.

In the mean time, last May Hayden fell off his brother’s shoulders and broke his right arm and just last November he had a hernia that required emergency surgery at 3 in the morning.

Through all this he’s always amazed us at how well he recovers and handles the whole thing.

At 8am central time tomorrow, he’ll be back in the operating room and my wife Aimee and I will be pacing in the waiting area once again.

While we, too, have gotten a certain level of acceptance with these hospital trips, nothing can truly calm a parent’s mind while their child is in danger than the faith that larger forces in the universe are on our side. Last February, just 15 minutes before we left for the hospital for his first surgery, I wrote an email asking for prayers for Hayden and we were literally swamped with personal emails wishing him and us well.

So once again, I’m sending out an email asking for prayers for Hayden… after all, it’s worked in the past

And, I do hope that this will be the last surgery he ever requires and that after a few months he’ll get tested and we’ll find he’ll be putting this behind him.

Heck, by the time he’s 5 years old, I’d love it if he couldn’t even remember it happened.

Last time I wrote about this I mixed in a marketing lesson about the importance of selling people things that they really want.

At the time, if someone could have sold me a solution for Hayden that didn’t require surgery, I would have paid on the spot without hesitation. While an extreme example, there are products and services that people are passionate about that are better to sell than others where the interest is more lukewarm (or non-existent).

Because my last post generated so much interest about viral marketing, I thought I’d talk about the viral effect of my last email about Hayden.

Not only did my subscribers email me, but word spread to the point where people were talking about ‘how’s Hayden’ all over the place, even during the opening minutes of a teleseminar I wasn’t even on.

Eventually, I had phone calls and emails from people far and wide, many who I knew were not on my list.

This isn’t a case study for profit, of course, but it does illustrate the effect of people talking with each other and spreading emails and web links between each other when they have something they want to share.

We’re all connected by social networks and if you set up the right systems, you can tap into the vast power of word of mouth communication, too.

In the coming weeks, I will be talking more with you about incorporating viral marketing into your business model, but for now I want to let you know I will likely be out of the office for a while.

And, the viral word of mouth I am most interested in now is for all our prayers to reach the right ears and bring my son through these next few days safe, healthy, and in good hands.

I’ve been asked to post as soon as I have word on Hayden and I promise you’ll be among the first to know after his grandparents

Here’s to the unlimited power of prayer and positive energy (and the best surgeon in Austin!),

Craig Perrine