Guts Over Gurus
Trust your gut, not your guru.
Trust your gut, not your guru.
While I like -- and value -- input from others, my gut has never let me down in 40-plus years of writing ads and running campaigns.
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 -- I've written over 100,000 ads and I still figured a fresh set of eyes couldn't hurt.
Where I Went Wrong
First, after several people told me 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 dropped by more than half in the first month. A couple years later, I acquiesced again. The second time I let a guru-built funnel run, sales fell nearly a third. Hey, at least it was an improvement. Long story short, I'm guessing ClickFunnels isn't the right tool for this business, or at least not for someone selling what I sell.
Next, since I'm connected to plenty of high-level marketers -- people you've heard of -- I gave a few of them a shot at media buying. They swore they could get better results than me on my own campaigns. "Have at it," I said. Guess what? On paper, they were right. Our conversion costs went down -- CPA, CPC, CPM, all dropped. BUT actual sales dropped right along with them. Our numbers got progressively worse the longer they ran the buys. So that didn't work either -- great efficiency metrics, worse revenue, which tells you everything about what those metrics were actually measuring.
Then I brought in a marketer with years of global experience who also knew my brand well. He and his team took a real crack at it -- and it ended with me running my own ads again within a couple of months. That outsourcing effort failed too.
Finally, near the end of my guru journey, I even got an assist from Facebook's own Global Marketing Team. They spent months in the account with us, guiding, tweaking, optimizing. Our Ads Manager dashboard looked fantastic. Once again, CPA, CPM and CPL all dropped -- right along with 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, telling him that no one seems to understand my business -- that everybody says they can get me better results, but nobody has. He looked at me and said, "Trust your gut, bro. You've always known what to do. What makes you think someone else is 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 some guru could do it better than I could. It's the same voice that convinces good copywriters their own headline isn't good enough without an expert's blessing, when the fix was staring them in the face the whole time.
It turns out 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 own business. MY FAILURE... period. And if you're an agency owner nodding along right now, it's worth asking whether you've made the same mistake with your own clients -- agreeing with them instead of telling them what's actually right just because it's easier than trusting your own read on the account.
I am my own guru. My gut is my guide. No one knows my business better than me. No one knows your business better than you do. So let your gut be your guide, too -- and if you're outsourcing decisions you already know the answer to, ask yourself who that boundary is actually protecting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ken had someone build a funnel on ClickFunnels after multiple people recommended it. The first funnel caused sales to decrease by 700%. A few years later, he tried again with a guru-built funnel, and sales dropped over 300% that time—better than the first attempt, but still a massive failure.
When high-level marketers took over Ken's ad campaigns, they did lower conversion costs and all the typical metrics (CPA, CPC, CPM). But actual sales dropped and progressively worsened over time. Better-looking numbers didn't translate to better business results.
When Ken mentioned that no one seemed to understand his business or deliver better results, Gary told him to "trust your gut bro, you've always known what to do." Gary questioned why Ken thought someone else could do it better than him.
Nope. Facebook's Global Marketing Team spent months working with Ken, guiding and tweaking his campaigns. While the ads manager looked great and metrics like CPA, CPM, and CPL dropped, sales still went down—same pattern as all the other guru interventions.
Ken realized the guru-led marketing failures weren't about the gurus—they were about his failure to trust himself and his gut. He failed to filter industry "best practices" against what actually works for his non-cookie-cutter business instead of following his own instincts.
