True story:
I was once listening to Dany Kennedy talk about the paradox of how he rails against using manual labor to sell with… while he’s on stage speaking and selling his products.
(i.e. doing manual labor).
I’m certainly no Dan Kennedy, but I can relate.
Call it hypocrisy if you want.
(You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.)
But, for better or worse (I just know it works for me), I’m a…
- Novelist who doesn’t read novels
- Podcaster who doesn’t listen to podcasts
- Email marketer who rarely reads emails
- An affiliate marketer who doesn’t sell products via affiliates
And yet… here I am telling you to buy my novels, listen to my podcast, read my emails, and buy from my affiliate link (when I sell stuff as an affiliate).
Can we say “disconnect”?
But wait, my hypocrisy gets better!
I also write marketing, copywriting, business, and sales books… but rarely read books about marketing, copywriting, business, or sales. I much prefer reading autobiographies of great people who have conquered their fields, scuttled their competition, and accomplished great things.
But, not marketing people.
Or sales people.
Or, even business people, necessarily.
You see, instead of reading about the newest way to squeeze out an extra .005% response or learning another way to outsource… or get more done in less time… I’d rather read about how the musician Yanni went from sleeping in his friend’s basement, dirt broke and with no future… to becoming one of the most successful musicians of all time (even if I think most of his music is too dainty for my taste). Or how author, columnist, and right wing political commentator Pat Buchanan went from being a brawler always looking for a scrap on the streets of Washington D.C., getting tossed in jail, and causing hell everywhere he went… to becoming one of the most prolific political writers of our time and advising presidents. Or how a desperate Stephen King went from getting hundreds of rejection slips for his stories and having to type on a broken typewriter balanced on a child’s desk on his knees in the back of his cold trailer home… to becoming perhaps the most popular fiction writer in history.
And those autobiographies are just for starters.
There’s also the late football great Walter Payton.
And filmmaker James Cameron (who made the 2 highest grossing movies of all time — and let me just say, the extreme and borderline sociopathic stuff that guy does just to get a single camera shot for a scene in a movie that most people won’t even probably notice is crazy…)
And my boy coach Mike Ditka.
And comic book creator Stan Lee.
And, most recently, General Douglas MacArthur, whose real life exploits in wars and battles (both on the battle field, and in politics) make anything Hollywood could cook up look like the Mickey Mouse Hour.
Lookee:
All these autobiographies change the way you think.
They change the way you view success.
And, they change the way you attack problems.
The things you learn in autobiographies of great men aren’t the same things you’re going to learn in yet another best-selling business book on Amazon or in an IM launch with a fancy whiz-bang name attached to it designed to rile up the goo-roo fanboys and affiliates haunting the Warrior Forum.
This is the kind of material that changes your brain.
Forces you to be more adaptable.
And, dare I say… turns you into an infidel in your niche — as you automatically start doing things the opposite of how everyone else is, not caring what people think, and developing a powerful “anything that gets in your way DIES!” mindset that’s as rare as hens teeth these days. (People fake this attitude in social media all the time, I’m talking about “for realz” having it.)
My point?
I once heard this advice:
“If you want to do great things, don’t read great books. Read books about great men.”
(That’s more of a paraphrasing, but you get the gist…)
So it just seems to me that, if you want to conquer and rule over whatever it is you do… read about great people, and how they thought and worked… how they stared Desperate in the face and kicked its ass… and how they (to quote one of my favorite movies “The Shawshank Redemption”) sometimes crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
Anyway, something to think about.
Do whatever it is you think is right.
I’m not here to tell you what to read or not.
If you want to read about yet another super secret ninja rockstar gangsta persuasion technique, then have a party.
Me?
I’m gonna get back (right when I’m done writing this) into reading about how General MacArthur inspired such a fear and awe in his enemies, that the Japanese obeyed (and practically worshipped) him over even their own emperor after WW2.
Okay.
One last paradoxical hypocritical note:
Yes, I think you should read biographies of great men before reading yet another thing about sales, marketing, persuasion, etc.
But, I also think you should check out “Email Players”:
Ben Settle
