There is something important we need to discuss.

Ever since I read the book “tribes” by Seth Godin and seeing some of the spectacular results of past thirty day challenge students (I’m in a really lucky position to be able to see — and get told about — how former 30 DC students are doing) that has been nagging away at me.

Why are there people who work just as  hard and don’t get the same results.

Why?

This has been bugging me.

Is there anything the people who have really great success have in common that the others don’t?

There is one thing, I’m sure it’s not. Having just read another brilliant book, “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, I realise there really is no such thing as inherent talent or genius. What there is, is an ability, and recognition, that you have to put in the hours. You actually need to move from passive receiving of information — to actively doing things.

Trouble is, what happens when you have two people, both working as hard as each other, both with excellent markets, however, one does much better than the other?

As I was making the long plane trip from Australia to Orlando last month. It hit me smack between the eyes. I literally had a  physical reaction. I’m going to tell you exactly what it was in this e-mail, but I want t get something else of my chest.

Another thing is troubling me, and it’s directly related to my first point.

And like the first point, I may have had a bit to do with creating a problem!

I love leverage. “What’s new!”, I hear you say.

The ability to be a gatherer of information and then distribute to your target market is a powerful weapon indeed. Like all weapons, pointing it directly at your head is a health hazard.

If all you do in life (or perhaps more importantly from my perspective, in your market), is be a “re-tweeter”  or a transmitter of other’s information. How do I say this… I believe the technical term is…

“You’re stuffed”

I’m afraid you’re not going to get anywhere. It is only the people who create content (or of course, products) that get ahead! Think about it. It’s all very well being the neighbourhood gossip and passing on information to all and sundry (let’s face it, the neighbourhood gossip has their place) but they are only ever going to be the gossip and eventually that gets tired and old.

From a financial perspective, “you’re stuffed”.

I can hold my head high that I have beaten the drum (some may say - to death) for market research for many years. I have gone to the mat for market research on many occasions. You know that. It’s not a sexy job, market research does not grab the headlines or make for mega-launches. It is of course, like most non-sexy things ( breathing, paying taxes, health insurance, paying bills, picking the synthesiser instead of guitar at high school) vital.

Part of the problem, is with my insistence to conduct a thorough market research before moving on to the much more sexy field that is traffic. Is people would drop market research (once they had found their niche) and that would be that. “let’s make sexy time with traffic and conversion”

What actually has to happen is a parallel process where market research turns into ‘Market Understanding. The excellent thing is this process is really step-by-step. A very simple set of techniques carried out on a daily/weekly basis will see you knowing everything there is to know about your market place of choice in very quick order. Not only that,in another case of fantastic leverage, we will make you a market player (notice I did not say expert!) In a very short period of time as well.

Excellent, I deserve the Nobel Prize for Internet Marketing!

Umm, no.

If you stopped there and in a beautiful tying together of the various themes of this e-mail you will be destined to have no greater status in that market other than professional  gossip.

 Let me repeat and rephrase.

If you do nothing else but use your twitter feed to parrot other information in your marketplace, you will serve a purpose but you won’t make much money.

You have to make the transition from Market Understanding to Market Leading. And in a statement that will mean this e-mail will be confined to the circular file of 95% of the people who bother to read it.  Going from “Market Understanding” to “Market Leading” does not happen overnight. You have to (sigh) work.

The really good news is, because most are not prepared to do this (And those that are prepared to do the work have no clue about the power of the tools that we teach you how to use) each market is wide open. Even ones that are highly contested.

It’s physics.

All things being equal, same marketing, same positions in Google, same traffic. The marketer who is creating content, conversations, new products and utilizing the new tools of social media and Web 2.0 is going to clean up.

The really interesting thing about this is, it’s a step-by-step process. I’ve seen it done again and again. At its core, to move from market understanding to market leading (and thereby making better money than somebody who never gets out off being the market gossip) is very simple.

The day you go from passing on other people’s insight and actually put your name to your own view and create a piece of content (a blog post, audio, video, a comic, an e-book, street theatre, you get the idea) you have taken your very first step on the path to becoming a market leader.

And to bring this baby home, this is the thing super successful thirty day challengers have done that their hard-working but sadly poorer compatriots have not.

Do me a favour, create one piece of original content in your market this week. It could be beautiful photo, a youtube video, well thought out blog post, or dare I say it… a clever tweet.

Do this, and you take a giant step towards becoming a real success in your chosen market.

Ed

PS: Let me be clear - it’s crucial to be the newsmaster - I do it a LOT! but make no mistake, I carefully think about every single one, to make sure they are going to be relevant and interesting to you, What I am saying, is if  this is all you do, your going to be broke.