Learning Marketing and my astonishment with how people market truth

[kieranperez]

So right now I’m learning marketing through Eben Pagan’s online course “Marketing Step by Step”. For starters, it’s actually a great course. It’s very disillusioning on what marketing is but Eben Pagan seems to put a lot of honest effort of saying basically ‘hey, this is a powerful tool/skill you have at your disposal. Use this responsibly.’ So just wanted to give him a good plug on a good course.

As I’m going through this course though and also as someone whose new to actually learning what marketing is, and especially when I learn about what effective and successful marketing is and how it works, I’m honestly just astonished at @Leo Gura has been able to do with all this here. Not even in the sense of not abusing this very acquirable skill that we call marketing, but the fact that this guy has been able to create a following of on YouTube alone 3/4 of a million subs talking honestly about topics such as enlightenment and all this sort of stuff that threatens one’s sense of self and beliefs and still market that effectively is really impressive but also inspiring. Not inspiring in some glorifying moral sense but inspiring because it shows me that I don’t need to sell out if I actually learn what real marketing is and that I can still be successful and do honest yet effective marketing.

[George Fil]

Sorry, had to

[Joseph Maynor]

A good product sells itself.  Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.  Steve Jobs understood this.  It's all about having an awesome product that people actually really want.  And you gotta spend a lot of time getting that product down pat before you release it.  This is one of the reasons Apple has degraded post Steve Jobs.  They didn't have his input on things.  Steve Jobs was a special dude.  Sometimes you just can't replicate that.  This is why Life Purpose is so important, and it's on you to make sure you're aligned with yours.  If you're not aligned with your Life Purpose, you're probably not gonna be great at what you do unless you luck out and fall into something you can be great at.  This is one reason I'm always emphasizing how important Life Purpose is to Personal Development.  Enlightenment is not the be all end all in Personal Development.  Neither is Conceptual Understanding.  If you aren't aligned with your Life Purpose, that's a pity.  That's too bad for you, ya know.  Everybody should have a Life Purpose in their bullpen, even if it's still in the oven.  Get that Life Purpose in the oven sooner rather than later.  You want Life Purpose on your radar, even if you're still young.  When you find your Life Purpose, you set yourself up to be truly world-class at what you do.

https://www.actualized.org/life-purpose-course

Edited July 26, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[kieranperez]

8 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

A good product sells itself.  Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.  Steve Jobs understood this.  It's all about having an awesome product that people actually really want.  And you gotta spend a lot of time getting that product down pat before you release it.  This is one of the reasons Apple has degraded post Steve Jobs.  They didn't have his input on things.  Steve Jobs was a special dude.  Sometimes you just can't replicate that.  This is why Life Purpose is so important, and it's on you to make sure you're aligned with yours.  If you're not aligned with your Life Purpose, you're probably not gonna be great at what you do unless you luck out and fall into something you can be great at.  This is one reason I'm always emphasizing how important Life Purpose is to Personal Development.  Enlightenment is not the be all end all in Personal Development.  Neither is Conceptual Understanding.  If you aren't aligned with your Life Purpose, that's a pity.  That's too bad for you, ya know.  Everybody should have a Life Purpose in their bullpen, even if it's still in the oven.  Get that Life Purpose in the oven sooner rather than later.  You want Life Purpose on your radar, even if you're still young.  When you find your Life Purpose, you set yourself up to be truly world-class at what you do.

https://www.actualized.org/life-purpose-course

Steve Jobs didn’t immediately understand this in the beginning. You can build a great product but if you don’t know how to market it, well... have fun. I would disagree on “everybody should have a life purpose.” Not everybody is equally ambitious and needs or wants the career of their dreams and that’s fine because for one, it’s already the case. I think what a lot of people on here fail to understand is that what you’re deeply passionate about can and most likely will change. For me, I took the life purpose course and it was REALLY hard because I wasn’t aware that the thing I thought I’ve been passionate about for the last 10 years was something that was starting to die away. Most masters tend to stumble into the thing that they eventually grow to love and we often overlook that. Sometimes that advice on having a “grand vision” isn’t really the best advice because if you look at what actually happens with people that achieve genuine mastery, they don’t have anything like that. The Buddha never had a vision of becoming as enlightened as he became and have the impact he had. Michael Jordan never set out in basketball with mastering basketball in the beginning, the man loved baseball more when he started (I’ve met him multiple times and got to shoot around with him at his camp a few years back). 

I think the life purpose course is helpful and it was so very much for me. However, the notion that everybody should have a life purpose is unrealistic and also just not true. 

[Equanimitize]

A good product doesn't necessarily sell itself in my opinion, how would you convince people to buy your product from the start? The mouse trap itself is marketing. Apple had incredible marketing that went along with their incredible product. 

Marketing is an absolute essential skill to have. Marketing often times is the major hiccup that differentiates a successful and unsuccessful business. Marketing entails putting yourself out there, which is what I think stops a lot of people from pursuing there Business. 

 

[zenith]

I'm really trying to wrap my head around marketing/business and how it revolves around my life purpose. Business is something that I've disregarded,  as I've tried to focus on identifying my life's purpose and building up my skills in that area.  So much emphasis is put on finding your purpose in life, but that's only half the puzzle. I've never thought that business/marketing would be as much fun as learning my craft, so never really pursued it.   I'm really beginning to understand that being able to market and sell yourself is just as important and is pretty much the elephant in the room for me. 

I'll check out Pagan's courses. Are there any other resources that are recommended?

[Equanimitize]

@zenith Eben Pagans courses are awesome and have great value. You can also check out Seth Godin, he has several books and courses. You can also read some more foundational books on Marketing from David Ogilvy. You can check out Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, and Joe Polish. 

Marketing is essentially a superpower to manipulate people. Whether you use it for higher consciousness ideals and values is on you.

I am learning about marketing myself and by no means am I an expert, but these are some of the things I have learned so far, good luck on your journey!

[kieranperez]

12 hours ago, zenith said:

I'm really trying to wrap my head around marketing/business and how it revolves around my life purpose. Business is something that I've disregarded,  as I've tried to focus on identifying my life's purpose and building up my skills in that area.  So much emphasis is put on finding your purpose in life, but that's only half the puzzle. I've never thought that business/marketing would be as much fun as learning my craft, so never really pursued it.   I'm really beginning to understand that being able to market and sell yourself is just as important and is pretty much the elephant in the room for me. 

I'll check out Pagan's courses. Are there any other resources that are recommended?

Marketing is 20% of the actions in your business that will generate 80% of your success in business. That DOESN’T mean that you’re necessarily good at what you do, a master at your craft, etc. You can be very successful and actually not be a master at whatever it is you’re doing. Which is why I have a lot of inner conflicts because I tend to not want to talk, teach, and sell people things that I haven’t embodied and mastered in my life. That’s a tangent though...

Back to you - I hear EXACTLY what you’re saying because you’re basically describing my mindset that I need to work on changing. What’s important about marketing is:

1. You can’t succeed in business without it. I don’t care who you are and how good you are, if you can’t market yourself, you’re going to fail.

2. Its disillusioning because it strips you away of your fantasies, dogma, and idealism. The marketplace doesn’t give a shit about you, me, or anything like that. You need to be strategic enough AND conscious enough (and balance both of those so you don’t shoot yourself and the people you sell to in the foot) of that reality and have the craftiness to create your vision but also be flexibile in your approach and toss all the means to the ultimate end. 

Also, get this idea of “fun” out of your head. Yes, you will reap rewards later on. However, starting a business, as I’m learning now, is not fun. It robs of your fantasies. You have to work on figuring what your prospective customer actually needs, wants, and their triggers. Like @Equanimitize said above, marketing done right is a superpower. You can use it to manipulate people and also elevate people. However, don’t fall into the trap of either being so idealistic and pretend to be a saint where you’re not pragmatic but also don’t fall into the trap of fucking other people over. Marketing really is a science. Now that I’m learning what real marketing is, I can see a lot in the videos alone on actualized.org where Leo is doing very effective marketing and I never even knew. But hey, look at what he created. 

Lastly, and I already alluded to this, you can be REALLY masterful at something, but that doesn’t mean people know you, you’re making the impact you want to have (assuming you do), etc. For instance, how many people known of Peter Ralston? That man mastered every martial art out there is DEEPLY enlightened and has a mastery of consciousness work. People don’t know him. Even plenty of spiritual teachers don’t know him. I live here in San Francisco 2 blocks of from the famous San Francisco Zen Center and no one knows who he is. I’m also a competitive runner and know many world class coaches who’ve coached Olympic medalists and they’re not successful in business. 

I hope this helps

 

[d0ornokey]

Leo is a great businessman, he ran a large marketing company before actualized and has great - excellent business skills 

that being said, leo had first mover advantage - he had amazing timing on youtube. doing what he did now would be a fuck ton harder id think

[Joseph Maynor]

2 hours ago, d0ornokey said:

Leo is a great businessman, he ran a large marketing company before actualized and has great - excellent business skills 

that being said, leo had first mover advantage - he had amazing timing on youtube. doing what he did now would be a fuck ton harder id think

What made Leo popular was his Stage Orange-style earlier Personal Development videos, don't forget that.  Leo did not start out doing esoteric topics like Enlightenment until after he got popular with the earlier videos.  So, I think it's a mistake to think Leo got popular by marketing Enlightenment videos.  He was already popular, and then he shifted gears into the Enlightenment videos.  I remember when it happened.  But half of Leo's videos -- his earlier videos -- were mostly all Stage Orange-style Personal Development videos.  It would be interesting how successful Leo would have been if he started off doing the Enlightenment videos straight away.  That's a hard thing to do because you don't got the attention.  Leo had the attention, and then he switched gears after he already had it.  If anything, whether intended or unintended, Leo did a bait-and-switch from the Stage Orange-Style Personal Development to mostly covering Enlightenment.  Try getting popular on YouTube starting out doing the Enlightenment videos, that would be an interesting test.  Probably much harder would be my guess.  Just because you're gonna have a much smaller slice of the pie of viewers that are even gonna be interested in you in the first instance.  You gotta get on people's radar screen to become popular, right.  The dog has to like the dog food.

Early Leo:

 

Edited July 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[d0ornokey]

@Joseph Maynor yeah. leo would have been the largest PD channel on youtube if he kept up orange videos. his growth rate tanked after he got esoteric

that really must have been a hard choice 

btw, i meant to say that I don't think leo would be nearly as popular with his orange videos if he started now 

Edited July 28, 2018 by d0ornokey

[Joseph Maynor]

14 minutes ago, d0ornokey said:

@Joseph Maynor yeah. leo would have been the largest PD channel on youtube if he kept up orange videos. his growth rate tanked after he got esoteric

that really must have been a hard choice 

I don't think his growth rate 'tanked' necessarily, but Leo definitely had already established a sizable audience by the time he started to get more esoteric.   And I think to this day, those earlier videos probably drive a lot of new people to Leo's channel.  And then they get exposed to the esoteric stuff.  I know I was attracted to the earlier videos initially.  I was not happy when Leo started to do the Enlightenment videos initially.  I think this was back in 2015 (3 years ago now).  Obviously, now, I'm at a much different place than I was then.  But when you're expecting Stage Orange-Style Personal Development, Enlightenment talk sounds like a total distraction and mistake.  I was big into Stage Orange-Style Personal Development all throughout 2014 when I was watching Leo's videos.  And I think a lot of other people come to Personal Personal Development from that perspective, initially at least.  It took a couple of years for the Enlightenment stuff to click with me.  I really didn't like it when I first heard about it.  I thought it was spiritual bypassing and a distraction from doing the relevant work at hand.  But now, I think very differently, right.  So, I came around eventually, and ultimately flourished with Enlightenment.  

Edited July 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[aurum]

@kieranperez

Yeah the marketing rabbit hole is incredibly deep. Everyone needs to study it, if only to understand how not to get sucked into cheesy marketing. Check out John Carlton and Dan Kennedy, they'll probably blow your mind.

 

[aurum]

15 hours ago, zenith said:

I'm really trying to wrap my head around marketing/business and how it revolves around my life purpose. Business is something that I've disregarded,  as I've tried to focus on identifying my life's purpose and building up my skills in that area.  So much emphasis is put on finding your purpose in life, but that's only half the puzzle. I've never thought that business/marketing would be as much fun as learning my craft, so never really pursued it.   I'm really beginning to understand that being able to market and sell yourself is just as important and is pretty much the elephant in the room for me. 

I'll check out Pagan's courses. Are there any other resources that are recommended?

The way I wrap my head around it is that it's incredibly selfish to think that people should buy your product or service without marketing and sales.

Your goal is for people to buy your product. But the random guy walking down the street's goal is to pay his bills, take care of his family, get a nice meal, etc.

So why should he give a shit about your product?

You have to show him that he should care. You have to go "stop what you're doing! This thing will make your life better!" Otherwise how will he know?

Imagine you were in a store, someone came up to you and asked you to buy product X. But when you asked them what it was or what it did or why you should buy it, they wouldn't tell you. How likely are you buy? Even if that was the best product on Earth, you're leaving after a few seconds. 

As I've gotten more into business, I've actually really come to love marketing and sales. The psychology is incredibly fascinating and it's always a challenge. You have to really see how beneficial it is for you to do this in your business.

Resources I'd recommend would be anything by John Carlton and Dan Kennedy. Also, check out "Building A Story Brand" by Donald Miller.

[kieranperez]

28 minutes ago, aurum said:

@kieranperez

Yeah the marketing rabbit hole is incredibly deep. Everyone needs to study it, if only to understand how not to get sucked into cheesy marketing. Check out John Carlton and Dan Kennedy, they'll probably blow your mind.

 

Will do eventually. Trying not to get too caught up in theory at this point as I need to create results. Also on a super tight budget and need to find away to escape living at home and find a way to live on my own, pay my bills, and expand from there. Plus I’m living in the heart of San Francisco so finding a place is a place here is about as hard as getting enlightened to Buddha level in one shot lol.

[Joseph Maynor]

4 minutes ago, kieranperez said:

Plus I’m living in the heart of San Francisco so finding a place is a place here is about as hard as getting enlightened to Buddha level in one shot lol.

I hear ya.  But we're very lucky to live in SF.

Edited July 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[zenith]

SF?! You guys must be loaded 

I consider myself pretty intuitive and can read desperate BS marketing tacts from a mile away. So I have always been paranoid and extra cautious about how I go about it doing it, which has meant limited marketing. Believing in a life purpose and has really helped reframe what I'm doing and put a different light on everything.  Being able to be confident in a craft/skill that can meet the clients expectations have taken me alot of time too. 

[d0ornokey]

@Joseph Maynor ur right, not tanked

but viewership cut down a lot as you said and growth rate cut in half since 2 years ago (according to his channel analytics)