The Underachiever Life

It's important to give your audience a reason to keep listening...

This came in as a comment after I published part 2...

Yep, John saw the presentation I did in Orlando, Where I first talked publicly about the new concept.

Something i'll refer to as the FACTOR

(Until I can come up with something better anyway - you would be amazed how many content creation efforts get derailed because they could not get a name decided.. I'm sure there are other ways - but as I was taught - let the headline/title come to you after you have banged out the content...)

So John liked it and when I gave the refined version of the presentation at Mass Control 2.0 in San Diego - that crowd thought so much of it I got a standing ovation.

It all started however, with me reading Seth Godins latest book Tribes

Rather than me regurgitate the concepts - go and get the book yourself, there are even free authorised PDF's around the place so money is no excuse.

I listened to it on my iphone and I was gobsmacked (In fact, I just got the Kindle version to read it again). It's not very long and it makes the compelling case of why, in this day and age....

If your not a MARKET LEADER, your business and the lovely income that you've grow quite fond of will have a very limited life span.

Before we go on and I give you one of my world famous (at least in my mind!) "physics" examples. I need to tell you what I mean when I say "MARKET LEADER"

First of all, Let me tell you what a Market Leader isn't.

A MARKET LEADER is not the person that makes the most money in any particular market.

Microsoft is far and away the money leader when it comes to revenue in the IT world. In terms of fresh thinking, new ideas, and creating the "Conversation" (I hate the phrase "Conversation" by the way - but I'll come back to that.) even my most rabid of microsoft friends would admit that it's been a long while since they have "set the agenda" in the IT space.

Apple (and no - i'm not going to be talking about them in the computer field!) do not even come close to selling the largest number of mobile phones. When they introduced the iPhone at Macworld 2007 history has shown they altered the mobile phone landscape.

Forever.

That's real market leadership.

Think of your favourite hobby. I bet there are "Market Leaders" in that field as well.

Let's take Photography, Nikon, Sony and Canon are the "Most revenue" leaders in that Market Place.

But photographers know that real innovation is coming from Leica, Phase One, Hasselblad and Mamiya. Incredible Software innovations from Apple (look at iPhoto!) Nik Software and other botique outfits "set the agenda".

That would be a good definition actually, the type of Market Leaders I'm interested in and that youe MUST become are ones "Setting the Agenda" (Don't worry - the real "piece de resistance" of this whole thing is anyone can do this - Step-by-Step)

What about Information marketers - do we have to become "Market Leaders"?

and before you answer that question EDWARD WELLS DALE...Let me remind you of your own teaching in 2004/2005...

Ummm....OK....

It's true in 2004 Frank Kern and I used to teach the incredibly successful "Underachiever Method", we would proudly proclaim that we would not be experts in any of our markets. We might even have said, "too much market knowleged may get in your way...."

That was true...

THEN

Now that advice posses a greater risk to your wealth than Swine flu.

TRIBES - REALLY LAYS OUT THIS LEADERSHIP ARGUMENT MUCH BETTER THAN I CAN.

Here is my take on the argument - Given my weird ability to just GET physics - lets look at this little situation.

Imagine two marketers in a competitive market.

They both for the purposes of this example have the same product, the same traffic numbers, they get the same conversion....

BUT!

One of them is completely anonymous, using a fake name and has ZERO interaction with the niche community. The other one is active, well known, speaks at conferences, writes articles on blogs, has a podcast, gets called up by papers and industry journals for comment.

Based on Physics, who do you think has the best chance for creating a long term sustainable business that can survive (and more importantly thrive!) as technology or google changes the way they do things...

All things being equal you would want to be number 2.

TRIBES tells you exactly why.

The one negative of the book, is it doesn't tell you how...Seth makes a point of saying that you need to figure out how to become a leader in your market...

HOLY S**T

AS I flew on the way to Tuvalu, As clear as the text on this monitor (and being the superb Apple 24 inch monitor - that's very clear!!) I knew it.

I knew exactly what I was going to talk about at Orlando, which impacted John so much.

Unreal...

BUT.....

Hang On...Seth's a legend, if he can't define how to become a leader in a market, who the hell am I to even begin to think I new this.

I spent an Age attacking my process from every angle.

I then relised I know EXACTLY how to become a market leader, because I have seen it done hundreds of times with successful Thirty Day Challengers.

TRIBES had laid out the best argument ever as to why you need to become a market leader in your market.

I KNOW exactly how anyone can do it...step by step... i've seen it done so many times. It's a process that's learnable, predictable and repeatable.

It takes time and considerable effort.

PPFPFPFPFPFPPFPFFPZZZZZZZZZZ

(You know what that is by now!)

On the bright side - if you can write and send an email, excited about your market (note I said excited - i did not say you needed to be an expert - BIG difference) you are distinctly overqualified!

This distinction means everything changes in this years Thirty Day Challenge.

We get Started with the biggest Pre-Season ever in Early June.

Who's with me.

If you liked this atricle, I would really appreciate you sending out a tweet about it. I also read all the comments and thanks to the great disquss comment system I can respond to them from whereever I am in the world...