89: Life and Entrepreneurship with the King of AdWords, Perry Marshall

Show Notes

Perry says her journey happened in multiple phases.  His first foray into entrepreneurship was when he was 17 selling speakers out of his garage.  It was a technical hobby that made some nice money.  Perry then went to college for engineering and was working for Grainger.

At the 6:30 min mark, Perry talks about how a prank at his first job that got him fired, turned into a blessing in disguise – it led to a series of jobs that didn’t work out.  This totally shook him up and he started to sour on working for someone.

A friend introduced him to Amway and it made sense to him for where he was in his life.  Perry did Amway for 6 years, but in Perry’s words, it was a failure as a business.  But, he learned how to put on a suit, give a presentation, how to sell, deal with rejection, and cold call.  Without knowing it, this was preparing him for his future.

He then moved to Chicago and took an engineering job for 2 years.  He was laid off, so he went into sales.  It was still hard and not natural for him to sell.  He was fired – again.

It was 1997 and Perry was up to high eyeballs in debt.  He had another child on the way and was having health issues because of stress.  It was at this time that he found Dan Kennedy and started to use Dan’s principles of direct marketing.  To Perry, direct marketing was like the engineer’s version of selling because it is based on a system and series of levers.

Things finally clicked for him.  At this time, the web is just starting and Perry saw an opportunity to take direct response/mail marketing and apply it to the web.

He got a new job and put it into practice for himself to generate leads.  His systems started generating daily leads for him of people who were really interested in his services.  When Perry started with the company, the part of the business he was in charge of was doing about $200,000 per year.  Within 4 years, he had grown it to over $4 million and the company sold giving Perry a nice bonus because of stock he had.  He took what he had done and started consulting in this specific niche.  This put him on the path to the business he has today.

At the 28 min mark, Perry talks about success and how he pieced together everything he learned from his numerous jobs and firings and where life took him to build his business.  He talks about being a student and teacher and how both are needed to succeed.

How has being adoptive parent impacted your life as an entrepreneur?

Adopting is a crazy adventure

At times it has been hard and put strain on the household and relationships

But, it has been incredibly rewarding.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint, it has created a keen awareness to specific thinks

For example, almost every epic story features an orphan (Batman, Superman, Tony Stark, The Lion King, Cinderella, and on and on)

All humans feel abandoned and shoved out into the world to fend for themselves at some point.

In some way, all humans are orphans and every day when you get out of bed, you are selling to “orphans.”

Explain the most important points of 80/20 sales and marketing…

Your initial thoughts when you hear 80/20 are just the tip of the ice berg

80/20 is really a law of all cause and effect.  20% of all causes generate 80% of all effect

There isn’t anything in your business that isn’t 80/20.  It’s everywhere.  The pattern is universal.

Every aspect and area of your business down to how you track your numbers has an 80/20 to it.

Further, there is an 80/20 on the 80/20 – so for example, 20% of your customers produce 80% of your revenue.  And 20% of those customers and 4% generate 80% of 80% or 64% of your revenue and so on.

What working/not working today with AdWords?

First, don’t even bother if you are not willing to get a serious AdWords education.  It’s like playing against the casino, so you have to be prepared.

Start with remarketing and retargeting before your buy cold traffic, because retargeting is reaching out to people that have shown interest for your solutions on your site already.

Remarketing/targeting will help you find our more about who these potential customers are so when you do AdWords, you will have a much better idea of who to target.