Guts Over Gurus
Trust your gut, not your guru.
While I like — and value — input from others, my gut has never let me down in 53 years.
Since day one, I've been confident about how to market my business. I was (fairly) sure I had it down. At the same time, there was always this little voice in the back of my head. That voice of doubt. You know the one I'm talking about, right?
Over the last several years, I’ve occasionally invited someone else to participate in our advertising. It seemed worthwhile to get an outside, expert opinion after all.
Where I Went Wrong
After several people told me that my business needed to be on Russell Brunson’s wildly popular platform ClickFunnels. (Notice the lack of affiliate link?) I let someone build me a funnel. And they built a great one…as far as I could tell. And then this happened: sales decreased by 700%. A few years later, I acquiesced again. The second time I allowed a guru-built funnel, sales went down over 300%. Hey, at least it was an improvement? Long story short, I'm guessing ClickFunnels isn't the right tool for this business.
I’m connected to lots of high level marketers, people you've heard of, I decided to give some of them a shot at media buying. They swore they could do better than me and get better results with my advertising campaigns. “Have at it boys and girls,” I said. Guess what? They were right. Our conversion costs went down, our CPA, CPC, CPM, all dropped. BUT, our sales dropped too. In fact, our numbers progressively worsened over time. So, that didn't work either.
Then, I tapped-in a marketer that has years of experience and a deep understanding of marketing globally. As a bonus, he knew my brand and business very well. So, he and his team had a crack at it, which ended up with me running my own ads once again. Yes, that effort to outsource failed, too.
Finally, nearing the end of my guru journey to better KPI’s, I even got an assist from Facebook’s Global Marketing Team. They spent months drilling in with us, guiding, tweaking. Yes, our ads manager looked great. Once again our CPA’s, CPM’s and CPL’s dropped… along with our sales.
I had trusted EVERYONE to take me to the promised land and we drove in circles. The only person I consistently failed to trust was looking back at me in the mirror every day.
Who Knows Better Than You?
Last October, I was in New York sitting in Gary Vaynerchuk's office, talking with him and I casually mentioned that no one seems to understand my business. And while everybody says they can get me better results, no one has. He looked at me and said “trust your gut bro, you've always known what to do. What makes you think someone's going to do it better?”
He was right. I don’t own a cookie-cutter business, so why would cookie-cutter strategies work for my brand? I always knew what we needed to do to sell our service. I just had to stop listening to that stupid voice in the back of my head. The one that told me someone else, a guru, could do better than I could.
It turns out that all of those “guru-led” marketing failures were actually MY failures. My failure to trust myself. My failure to filter industry “best practices” against the reality of my business. MY FAILURE… period.
I am my own guru. My gut is my guide. No one knows my business better than me, no one know your business better than you do, so let your gut be your guide, too.