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In The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle wonders at the sudden and inexplicable success of the Russian women's tennis program over the past decade.

The real reason was not something new in the water, or a brand new training facility, or anything you might expect. Instead, it was the international success of 17-year-old Anna Kournikova, whose prowess in tournaments was matched only by her supermodel looks. She quickly became the most-downloaded athlete in history.

All of a sudden, Coyle writes, thousands of young Russian girls had a role model. More than that, they had a desirable future to which they could aspire. I want to be like her, they all thought. She's like me. I'm like her. I can be that too. If I practice hard, for years. I'd better get busy.

Coyle refers to this effect as ignition. Just as a tank of gas won't move a Ferrari – or a Vespa – without a spark to set the engine running, a well of potential skill and practice-energy will never manifest in talent without a spark.

Are You Good at Math? When's Your Birthday?

In a study described by Coyle, researchers had a bunch of college students read through some magazine articles. One of the articles was about a student, Nathan Jackson, who discovered he enjoyed math, applied himself in college, and was now a successful and happy math professor.

Half of the students read the article as is. The other half were fed a teeny fib: Nathan's birthday was altered to be the same as theirs. Then the researchers tested the students' willingness to spend time working on a math problem that had no solution.

The results: "the birthday-matched group had significantly more positive attitudes about math, and persisted a whopping 65 percent longer on the insoluble solution."

Even though each student was working on the problem alone, in a closed room, the perceived connection with Nathan Jackson – as trivial as a shared birthday – was enough to change their self-identity about themselves as mathematicians.

Why I No Longer Completely Despise "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus

For many years, I've gone to online marketing conferences where some of the speakers earn their living by pitching their courses, workshops, and coaching programs from the stage. I've always cringed at the long "Lazy Loser" presentations. They go something like this:

1. PowerPoint shows presenter 3 years ago, in a ratty basement room with a Pentium 286 computer with socks strewn over the monitor and a moth-eaten couch in the background

"Here I am in my sister's basement after losing my job as a pizza delivery guy because I used to pick the mushrooms off the pizza and eat them myself."

2. PowerPoint shifts to presenter 2 years ago, dead expression on his face as he sits in a depressing cubicle

"And here I am working 29 hours a day at my sister's husband's debt collection company, processing the paperwork that would repossess grandma's dentures."

3. PowerPoint shows presenter with arms around babe of a girlfriend, in front of mansion with expensive car, on a private jet, in a speedboat, flashing a Rolex

"But now, even though I'm unemployable and not that smart and really lazy, I make 3 millions dollars a year using this formula that I discovered by accident, and in about 20 minutes will tell you how to buy for the amazingly low price of $3995, but for you, today only, because [insert name of seminar host here] twisted my arm, it's only $1995 and the first ten people who climb over the heads of their fellow audience members get an additional bonus of every DVD set I've ever made, no matter how long ago."

And I would sit in the audience, cringing, wondering if I was the only person in the room not drinking the Kool-Aid, silently pitying the fools parting with their money and condemning the slick huckster for vacuuming the last dollars out of the pockets of gullible, desperate people.

"That Ain't Me, No That Ain't Me. I Ain't No Senator's Son, Son, Son"

But here's the thing: I was judging because the story wasn't mine. It wasn't an invitation to me to become a great online marketing success.

I've never been fired from pizza delivery; I've never slept in my sister's basement or worked for anyone I hated for more than a couple of weeks. My narrative is different. I went to an Ivy League university. My parents bought me my first car. I was never a slacker, or poor, or hopeless. At least not in that way.

I was exposed to this rags-to-riches narrative so many times over my first few years in online marketing that I came to believe I was doomed precisely because I didn't have such a story in my past. Unconsciously, I was hoping to sink that low so I could finally find the motivation to succeed. (If I hadn't been supporting a couple of kids at that point, I might have gone there.)

But here's what I was missing: the people who were leaping over tables and chairs to throw their money at the guru had suddenly been ignited. His story was their story. Regardless of whether the specifics of his program or course or software or workshop were sound, a whole bunch of people could now see themselves as successes.

If he could do it, they were thinking to themselves, then I can do it too. I'm not as hopeless as he was…

And when I think about how I was groomed for success my whole life – there was never any doubt that I would be highly educated, very successful (probably a lawyer), and connected to the right people as a birthright – I realize the importance, for people who didn't have that privileged childhood, of seeing someone just like them who had, against all odds, succeeded.

But here's my beef: the Lazy Losers are abusing that ignition, and in most cases, squandering it. I'll explain how by comparing their approach with the one I take with Camp Checkmate.

The Camp Checkmate Approach: Hard Work, Deep Practice

So you've probably heard by now that I'm holding an online marketing workshop, called Camp Checkmate, in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010.If you're hoping for someone to do the Rags to Riches dance to sell you some course or coaching program, you will be disappointed.

So why should you attend, and what does this have to do with Anna Kournikova, Nathan Jackson, and "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus?

Because it turns out that ignition is not enough. Ignition does not ignite talent, or skill, or capability. Ignition ignites the willingness to put in long hours of practice, to master the skills that produce the talent.

"Better Get Busy"

According to Coyle, ignition sends the following message to the brain:

"Hey, that could be you. Better Get Busy."

Busy? Busy doing what, exactly?

In Ten Thousand Hours, You Could Be Yo-Yo Ma

In researching the best performers in the world, in fields as diverse as music, sports, politics, literature, and dance, Coyle found an almost immutable law of talent: when a person practiced deeply for 10,000 hours (roughly 3 hours a day for 10 years), they became a world champion.

The 10,000 hours was not only necessary, it was sufficient. Regardless of "innate" ability or genius or anything mysterious given by God. A human who dedicates herself to mastery for that long will achieve world-class status.

Ignition is the seed event that starts the deep practice ball rolling. But ignition without the subsequent years of effort means nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because dashed hopes make it all the more difficult to believe in yourself when the next ignition occurs.

"Lazy Loser" Gurus Short-Circuit the Mastery Process

The big problem with the online marketing gurus setting expectations that anyone can achieve their level of professional and financial success by continuing to be lazy is that it just isn't true. They are masters at ignition: "Hey, that could be me."

But their need to make a buck short-circuits the second half of the equation: "Better get busy."

So the ignition is "spent," not on practice, but on a roll of the dice that the magic wand offered by the guru (at a hefty price) is enough. All that is needed. Brains and effort optional. 

So no matter how good their material or how rigorous their training, most of their customers are already predisposed to failure because of their fantasyland expectations.

And the gurus blame it on the lazy idiots who don't even take the shrink wrap off the DVDs.

Of course, when we reflect soberly, we realize that any strategy that requires neither brains nor effort is completely unsustainable. If it's so easy, anyone can do it, and the reward for that activity falls to minimum wage by the law of supply and demand. 

But in the heat of the moment, when all our "primal cues" about scarcity and exclusivity and belonging and identity are being invoked by a charismatic speaker wearing a watch we could never afford, we forget all that and respond, as nature intended, by igniting and following the path of least resistance.

Camp Checkmate – Two Days of Deep Practice

At Camp Checkmate, there are no shortcuts to mastery. What we're really working on, for two whole days, is the fundamental core of marketing: how to connect with our prospects so completely that they decide to like us and trust us with their futures.

We use simple and powerful tools to achieve this connection: the Google search results page, the Checkmate Matrix, Sean D'Souza's Reverse Testimonial Strategy, Perry Marshall's Diary Insight, Ken McCarthy's Testimonial Factory and Positioning work, Ben Jesson and Karl Blank's Objection/Counter-Objection Technique, and a bunch of exercises I've borrowed from the world of improvisational theater. 

But we are working, and working hard.

And it's the kind of work that simply doesn't happen when we're back home, in our offices, running our day-to-day businesses. Humans are social animals, and we take our cues on how to act from the other people in our environment. If you want to become a world-class direct marketer, then you have to spend time hanging out with other people practicing the same skills at the same level of commitment.

Camp Checkmate is a Talent Hotbed

In The Talent Code, Coyle writes about "Talent Hotbeds" – for example, a ramshackle tennis club in Moscow with one indoor court that has produced more top-twenty female players than the US. Or the Island of Curacao, whose Little League baseball team has made it to the Little League World Series semifinals six out of the last eight years.

Talent Hotbeds arise when two conditions are met:

1. There are enough environmental cues that motivate ongoing practice
2. The practice is done the right way – with learners struggling to attain skills just beyond their reach

The effectiveness of Camp Checkmate – as testified to by the reactions of participants, including direct marketing superstars like Drayton Bird and Perry Marshall – arises from the ways in which you are forced to practice skills of empathy and assertiveness, at first not on your business, but on other people's. 

Marketing is hard. Damn hard. 

So the task of the serious marketing educator is to chunk it down into manageable skills that a person can struggle with and succeed at. The most significant chunking at Camp Checkmate consists of solving other people's business problems before you address your own.

When you watch the video testimonials of Camp Checkmate participants, you hear the words "fun" and "easy" and "creative" a lot. Please realize that's just their perception. It's not the truth – at least not the "easy" part.

They're actually doing hard work, all of them. I know, because I watch the groups grapple with the games and activities. They're sweating out there.

But they don't realize it, because they're "in the zone." Time flies, insights come, and by the end of the exercise participants have developed new neuronal pathways that simply cannot form without this kind of deep practice.

Camp Checkmate is really an old-school gym, building marketing muscles. 

Through practice, repetition, and failure. 

Very unglamorous, yet wickedly effective.

The Two Easiest-Hard Days of Your Life

Look, I know it's a pain the butt to travel to Chicago for two days of workshop. Unless you live in Chicagoland, you'll have to fly out the day before, and you may even stay an extra night afterwards. 

And I know it's not cheap – even if Camp Checkmate were free, you'd still be paying hundreds of dollars on airfare and hotel. And Camp Checkmate is decidedly not free. In fact, it gets more expensive the longer you wait.

But here's why all that is a good thing:

The people you will be hanging out with all share your level of commitment. 

By virtue of their decision to turn up, they're contributing to the Online Marketing Talent Hotbed that is, in fact, the hallmark of every great seminar, workshop and mastermind group I've ever attended. 

At most marketing seminars, the networking is the best part, but it's the least scheduled and intentional part.

At Camp Checkmate, working in small groups with fellow campers is 90% of the experience. The others are coming to work with YOU. And you're coming to work with them. 

All I'm doing is attracting the right people and creating a structure and process that fosters deep practice and mastery.

Why Camp Checkmate Feels So Easy

I'm really proud of this bit, but the truth is I hit upon it by accident.

Because everyone is working on other people's businesses, the happy side benefit is that you will come home from Camp Checkmate with an amazing quality and quantity of new marketing material, ready to test.

New ads. New headlines. New landing page copy. New content for autoresponder and broadcast emails. New positioning. And new ideas for the visionary improvement of your current business.

And – I can guarantee this – you would never have come up with this material on your own. Not at this stage.

After Camp Checkmate, you'll be significantly better at coming up with it on your own. Unless you're Drayton Bird or Perry Marshall or Ken McCarthy or Sean D'Souza, someone who has already put in the 10,000 hours required of world-class mastery. For folks at that level, Camp Checkmate is like skill maintenance and refinement. But for the rest of us – and I include myself here – the Camp Checkmate experience definitely raises our game.

But in the process, we get our marketing done for us by people who can see what we can't because they're standing outside of our business, seeing our customers and competitors objectively, and with fresh eyes.

Ready to Crack Your Own Marketing Talent Code?

Here's the link to register for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010, and reserve your seat:

Single Payment $2497 $1497 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Three Payments of $866 $532 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Got questions about Camp Checkmate? 

Open Q&A phone session today, April 30, from 1:35-2:30pm Eastern Time:

Phone: 1-219-509-8222
Access Code: 233080#

It's an open line, so don't ask questions that you don't want the world to hear. 

If I think Camp Checkmate is for you, I'll tell you. And if I think it's not for you, I'll tell you that as well. Camp Checkmate will fill up, so it's just self-interest that I would discourage people who might not be a good fit. I don't like giving refunds, and I don't want people to show up who aren't able to contribute to their fellow campers' success.

Wishing you ignition and deep practice,
Howie

Two days ago, I was skyping with Sean D'Souza of Psychotactics.com when (now he'll know I was multitasking ;) an email came in from amazon: I had an $11.63 gift certificate, based on my stellar performance as an affiliate.

I skyped Sean, "Just got an amazon gift certificate, what book should I get?"

Sean answered immediately: "The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle."

Fast forward two days, I'm having lunch, the book arrives, and my hummus-covered hands can't wait to open it and start reading. I'm now on page 18, and I'm blown away by the insights. So much so that I put the book down and ran to the computer to blog about it.

Like all great ideas, they're both obvious and counter-intuitive at the same time.

I'll write a longer review when my hands are clean, my belly's full, and I've actually read enough of the book to sound smart about it.

For right now, my advice is: Just get it and read it. It will change how you learn, and how you market.

Thanks, Sean! And thanks Daniel!

The King Seeks an Heir

Once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters. As he was nearing retirement age and had spent his entire reign commissioning ballads about his greatness and generosity, he had not done much succession planning, and now had become somewhat desperate.

Which daughter should he choose to rule the land after him?

He decided to set his three daughters a task – whichever of them performed it best would win his undying admiration and the chance to move into the best room in the castle after he lit out for Boca Raton.

Here was the task he set: 

"In 4 weeks, bring me the sweetest peach in all the land."

The Daughters Search for Peaches

The eldest daughter, who was far too busy Facebooking to spend time searching all the land for a damn peach, waited 3.95 weeks and then ran to a nearby orchard, plucked a peach from the lowest branch of the nearest tree, and ran back up to the throne room for the royal tasting.

The middle daughter, who had a little more time on her hands since she was into Twitter, spent the four weeks tasting the peaches in all the local orchards. When she found the sweetest orchard, she tasted the peaches from the different trees, discovered the sweetest peach tree, and grabbed a peach from the lowest branch, and ran back up to the throne room for the royal tasting.

The youngest daughter, who knew from reading her fairy tales that she was expected to win and felt pressure to live up to expectations, spent the first week traveling up and down the kingdom, tasting random samples of peaches from each of the four peach-growing regions.

Once she determined that the southeastern region had, on average, the sweetest peaches, she spent the second week sampling each of the orchards of that region. 

Upon discovering that the Happy Peach orchard consistently produced the sweetest peaches in the southeast, she spent the third week tasting randomly selected peaches from each of the trees in this orchard.

When she had pinpointed the sweetest tree in the orchard, she spent the final week tasting peaches from the different branches of that tree. On the last day, she plucked the biggest, juiciest-looking peach from the winning branch and carefully brought it to the throne room for the royal tasting.

Which daughter would you put your money on?

What does this have to do with AdWords?

You may not care much about fictitious princesses and peaches, but I'm guessing you care a great deal about your business. So here's the question: which princess are you when it comes to testing the messages in your ads?

Which Princess are You?

Roughly 90% of business owners are the oldest princess. They write one ad, hoist it up the AdWords flagpole to see who salutes, and then think they're done with the process of ad creation. These are the people who often complain that online marketing doesn't work, that AdWords is just another scam, and that I should be cooked like a turkey for getting people's hopes up.

Another 9% of business owners are the middle princess. They understand the importance of testing, and they may be diligently testing all the time, but they're stuck in a rut that severely limits the improvements they can make. Instead of testing vastly different concepts, they're thinking of new ways to say "free shipping" and experimenting with commas and semi-colons and capitalization. 

At first, these tests can pay off, but over time, this attention to minutiae at the expense of big ideas leads to stagnation.

Only 1% of business owners (disclaimer: I'm making all these numbers up for dramatic effect; I have no idea what the true percentages are) are the youngest princess. Testing in a logical, methodical way. Virtually guaranteed to find, if not the sweetest peach or most appealing ad in all the land, at least one very near the top spot.

The youngest princess business owners are not afraid to wander far afield from their comfort zones. They don't rest on assumptions about who their customer is, what they want, why they want it, and how they want it. They research, make guesses, and test those guesses in a hierarchical fashion.

How to Test in AdWords

At Camp Checkmate, we spend one and a half days coming up with new ads, new landing pages, new headlines, new answers to objections, and new ways to appeal to our Ideal Customer. And if we just left it at that, everyone would go home happy. After all, they've totally busted through their creative rut, and they now have deep insight into their market.

But they don't really know how these new ideas will stack up against each other, and against their controls. Unlike other marketing media, where you can spend months and tens of thousands of dollars before you know if you have a sweet peach or a dud, in AdWords you can test quickly and cheaply.

That's why the last Camp Checkmate exercise gives campers a testing action plan: a framework for putting their ads into that optimizes the chances of finding the very best, most profitable ad.

1. Start with the Region

 In AdWords, the region is the Who. Who is searching for your keyword? Of that group, Who is your Ideal Customer?  Until you know your ideal customer, it's just silly to start fine-tuning language and offers.

2. Narrow in on the Orchard

The AdWord orchard is the What. What does your Ideal Customer want at the moment of search? A product? A service? A DIY manual? A review? Guidance and hand-holding? General information? A place to vent? Notice that the What will change as your Ideal Customer goes through the sales cycle. Don't think about What they want ultimately, but What they want right now, at the exact moment of this particular search.

3. Choose a Tree

 The AdWords tree is the Why. Why do they want What they want? Why are they searching? To solve a problem, or take advantage of an opportunity? To redeem themselves? To prove themselves worthy? To win love? To stop a feeling like frustration or confusion?

4. Select a Branch

The AdWords branch is the How. How do they want it? What are the features of the offer? Free shipping? In horizontal stripes? E-course or PDF download?

More Camp Checkmate Education – at Zero Cost

As part of my promotion for Camp Checkmate Chicago on June 10-11, 2010, I'm giving away much of my best training material. If you haven't yet signed up for the zero-cost pre-Camp Checkmate training series, you can still get in on the fun by clicking here.

You'll get Checkmate lessons in your inbox, and invitations to live training sessions and coaching calls. The deal is, I'm counting on the fact that enough people will say, "Wow, this free stuff is so good, I'd better go to Camp Checkmate where it's bound to be even better."

If you opt in right away, you'll have time to register for any of this week's live Checkmate webinars. There's one today, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday – and on Friday April 30 the early bird pricing for Camp Checkmate flies away for the summer.

Hope to see you at Camp!

Beekeeper Sue Hubbell writes in A Book of Bees:

" For 15 years now I have worked on such familiar terms with the bees that when I see them down the river, or listen to them at night, I know exactly what they are doing. I now can understand a little bit, though not nearly as much as I thought I did the first year I worked with them. They have forced me to realize that my senses and powers of observation are very limited.

"My city friends know well enough what I do here during the season; it may seem strange work to them, but it is undisputedly work; what I do during the slack times is harder for them to figure out: "organizing my ignorance" is perhaps as good a description as any."

Marketers have a lot in common with beekeepers; when we first start working with our market we think we know a lot more about them than we really do. The longer we engage with prospects, the better we get at figuring out how to speak to them and how to serve them, but we also realize how much we still don't know.

It's ironic, perhaps, that our increasing wisdom highlights our ignorance. But it's by exploring those places of ignorance, those little nooks and crannies where we don't know what we need to know, that we develop true deep market insight.

Organizing our ignorance

In online marketing especially, we like to think of ourselves as macho cowboys writing the great sales letter, making the great pitch, actively pursuing wealth. What's less obvious and less sexy work is the organization of our ignorance so that we may begin to close the gap between what we don't know and what we need to know in order to empathize and serve.

Simply sitting – meditating, stewing, imagining, whatever word makes us feel most OK with the inaction – with our confusion, our blankness, our unexamined assumptions, begins to allow for whole new levels of reality to emerge.

As marketers, we tend to rush in to answer those questions: to conduct a survey, to perform some market analysis, to take a wild stab or a wild guess at the answer. Doing something sure feels good; it feels like good old hard work. And hard work, we're told by our culture, makes us wealthy.

But it's a much more receptive, feminine act of simply being in the mystery that allows for the subsequent active work to be most effective.

Sitting in the Questions

So this isn't an article about how to do market research. Instead, it's an invitation to ask ourselves a series of humbling questions on a regular basis:

• "What might not be true here?"
• "What am I not seeing?"
• "What else could be going on here?"

Sitting with these questions, perhaps with a journal open in front of us, or maybe a set of colorful markers and a big pad of art paper,  might be the most profitable "nonwork" that we do all year.

Deep Curiosity is More Powerful than Knowledge

Once we have a map and a feel for the fertile terrain of the dark holes in our understanding, we can then begin the process of discovery with a new clarity and reverence for the ultimate mystery that is our prospect; the ultimate mystery that is every human being we may encounter on our journey.

No matter how well we think we know a person, be it a customer, a colleague, a life partner, a child, or even ourselves, the ultimate form of respect is a recognition of the deep mystery, the unknowable within them. Marketing, in its purest and deepest form, is not about knowing everything about the inner life of our prospect. Instead, it's being willing to approach them with fresh eyes every single time, to allow for deeper connection and communion.

"Slow Down" Marketing

If you'd like to experience a balanced environment, in which active and receptive forces dance in harmony to give you powerful and deep insight into your market, please consider attending Camp Checkmate in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010. While I don't tout the two days as "Slow Down" marketing, in a way that's exactly what goes on. We slow down our own monkey minds, get curious about reality, and start making connections that will seem obvious once we've made them. 

Read about Camp Checkmate, and sign up for the free pre-Camp training series here.

If you haven't been following Google's whirlwind evolution since the publication of Google AdWords For Dummies less than a year ago, you might be surprised what's new. This cute and very clear video gives you the lay of the land in about 75 seconds:

Help Me Help You

Which of these models are you most interested in learning more about? Take this quick poll and I'll find guest experts who can show you how to advertise profitably and painlessly with  the new models:

At the 2010 System Seminar in Chicago earlier this month, the rock star presenter was Mike Marshall, SEO Expert Extraordinaire. His presentation was nothing like I've ever seen or heard about SEO before, and I've been in this business since 2001. 

Mike showed us how to eliminate the months of trial and error testing that most SEO folks (agencies and entrepreneurs) go through to climb to the top of Google.

When I discovered that we were neighbors, I enticed him to visit and record an interview with me. For three selfish reasons:

1. I wanted to be one to sharing this great stuff with you. When you listen to it, you will go, "Wow, Howie, thanks for sharing this great stuff with me." You will white list my emails, click my links, and come to my workshops.
2. I wanted to help Mike promote his NC Search Engine Academy workshop (May 24-28, 2010). When Mike sees how this recording helps him fill the workshop, he will go, "Wow, Howie, thanks for helping me fill this workshop." He will teach me his SEO tricks and help me rescue my sites from Google's remainder shelves.
3. I wanted a reason to clean my cesspool of an office, and having a visitor is the best motivator for clutter removal.

So without further ado, here's a link to the interview in MP3 format. You can right-click to download it to your iPod or iPad or iPed (the new iPod for cyclists?) or iPeed (never mind) or iPood (really never mind) or even your desktop.

Mike Marshall Bends Your Mind About SEO

Here's a direct link (not an affiliate link, that's how serious I am about my three selfish reasons being sufficient) to Mike's Search Engine Academy workshop:

NC Search Engine Academy

Do me a favor: After listening to the interview, please post your thoughts to comments on this post. I'm really curious whether other people are as amazed by Mike's insights as I am.