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What is The Empire Strikes Back Effect?
Do you know about The Empire Strikes Back Effect?
You see, The Empire Strikes Back is a really funny movie…
…not ha ha funny either.
I mean it’s the kind of funny that leaves you thinking you’re not quite sure how you feel about it.
It drops you off at a really dark point in the story with all these cliffhangers…all these open loops.
Sure, from 2018 we might look back on it as one of the greatest films ever created but in 1980 when it was released…
…people didn’t feel like that.
Think about it…they had waited 3 years from the original Star Wars until The Empire Strikes Back came out.
And it would be 3 MORE years until Return of the Jedi closed all those storylines that Empire left people hanging on.
From Luke losing the duel, his hand, and maybe even his mind a little bit to Darth Vader, to Han Solo being encased in carbonite…
…let’s face it The Empire Strikes back ended our heroes on a dark note.
It was met with mixed reviews too.
People weren’t quite sure how they felt about it but honestly…I think they were mad because they got left on all those major cliffhangers.
They got no closure.
Years later, we love The Empire Strikes Back. We hail it as maybe the best Star Wars movie EVER! But we get the luxury of having a 3rd movie to watch.
They didn’t have that back in 1980.
So what the hell is my point here?
Why am I talking about The Empire Strikes Back for God’s sake and what the hell does that have to do with making money online?
It’s something I discovered when I started mentoring people.
A weird phenomenon.
You know how people always say that once they figured out they could make their first dollar online they were off to the races and they never looked back???
Yeah, that’s not true for everyone.
Some people experience a little success online and when it comes time to rinse and repeat they run into all kinds of trouble.
It’s like an effect that comes over people after they have achieved a little bit of success, but not as much as they had pictured in their minds…
…and now they know what they have to do to truly win.
A whole bunch more of what they just did.
Only now…nothing is new…or at least it doesn’t feel new anymore. The novelty is worn off.
Now comes the rinse and repeat portion that you always hear marketers talking about.
You know…”let me show you this easy way to make money online…then you just rinse and repeat until you’re RICH!”
Nobody tells you what that’s like, “rinsing and repeating.”
It requires more discipline and dedication to stay with it, than when you had never done it before and everything was brand new.
The truth is there is MORE to learn and there is another frontier. The place you were trying to get to…
…only to get there you have to slog through a bunch of stuff that you have already done before and that isn’t exciting.
It’s kind of just a bunch of work.
That must be how Luke Skywalker felt at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
Here, he thought that he was going to go duel Darth Vader and save the galaxy…
…but all that happened was he lost his hand, got his butt kicked and figured out that Darth Vader was actually his dad…
…He must have been hanging from that antenna thinking…
“damn…this is going to be much harder and take way longer than I thought…I have really underestimated my task. And on top of that my dad is a freaking Level 60 Douchebag!!!! Damn it!”
(wait until he figures out Princess Organa is his sister lol)
Anyways, to me…
…the greatness of Empire Strikes Back is that the fans watching the movie were left in a similar emotional state as Luke and the rebels when it comes to the story.
They wanted to know what happened. Instead they got left with a bunch of crap where NONE of their heroes won at all!
It sucked. Zero Closure.
It’s a lot like the first time someone launches a product. They might have won a little bit…
…saw maybe a little profit and put some valuable buyers leads on their list…
…but for the most part they are hanging from an antennae thinking…damn now what the hell am I supposed to do…
…I have to do ALL THAT AGAIN???
It’s the Empire Strikes Back Effect and my friends the struggle is real.
This is a point where many newer marketers give up.
They have experienced a little success but they have worked hard for it.
And now they think they know what’s behind all the hidden doors. How everything works and why everything happens.
Now they are left with the…”rinse and repeat.”
That can feel frustrating and boring.
And many times they go running into the warm and waiting comforting arms of the next shiny object sitting in their email inbox.
And the cycle begins again. It’s ironic and paradoxical.
ANd this is how people get demoted and stay at the bottom of the “marketing pile” for years.
BUT…
I want you to take comfort in something here.
Luke Skywalker did not give up at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
He went on to become a badass Jedi Knight and defeat Darth Vader.
Many of you set out to accomplish something online.
Learning how to do something and seeing a little success with it is a great benchmark for the future.
It proves that you are on the right track.
But you have not accomplished what you set out to yet.
Do not fall victim to The Empire Strikes Back effect and give up here.
True success online has allies.
Consistency.
Ambition.
Positive thinking.
Courage.
The ability to learn from failures.
And The ability to adjust strategy.
These things have gotten me further than anything else.
As a coach and mentor to quite a few people now I can tell you without a doubt that…
…lots of people give up after they have seen a little success. They lose a few of the critical allies of success, namely ambition and consistency.
Don’t be that person.
Knowledge is power and now that you know about The Empire Strikes Back Effect, you can be ready for it.
Go forth, conquer, come on back whenever you need another Star Wars analogy lol!
That’s all I got!
Kam
Are you Ignoring the Holy Trinity of MMO?
Have you ever noticed that the longer you do something the more you either consciously or even sometimes subconsciously develop a set of rules for doing what you do?
It’s almost like part of how you get better at what you’re doing.
If you do it long enough you can basically develop your own rule book of what to do and what not to do for success at almost anything.
It’s like that for me in the Make Money Online space.
I’ve been in this niche for a while and I’ve had my share of successes but I’ve also had my share of failures (or learning moments lol).
Over the course of all that time I have developed a kind of personal “handbook” of do’s and don’ts for myself. Things to help me not embarrass myself so much as I move forward on my journey.
I’d like to share 3 of the big ones from my handbook with you today.
I call them the Holy Trinity of MMO and I can safely tell you that every time I have ever ignored one of them I always paid for it. I’ve never walked away unscathed when I didn’t respect the MMO Holy Trinity.
So…okay, obligatory build up over. What are they?
The Holy Trinity of MMO is as follows:
- Cheap
- Easy
- Free
Let me explain.
Rule Number One – Cheap
Is the product you are trying to sell cheap or reasonably priced in conjunction with what the market perceives the price should be?
Just because you are the best email marker in the world and your email marketing book is the best because you have made a billion dollars with email marketing…
…what are comparable email marketing books retailing for?
If yours is listed at a moderately higher price than that, then generally you are now fighting an uphill battle because of it.
First rule of the MMO Holy Trinity. Make it cheap.
Rule Number Two – Easy
Make sure the tactics and strategies you teach in the product are easy to grasp and make sure you have convinced them of this on the sales page.
If they are not then you better address it on the sales page and you better fix it in the product. What do I mean by address it?
I mean make sure you break the information down and make it easy in the product. Use analogy and storytelling to help people understand and relate to complex ideas. AND on top of that, make sure you let them know it is going to be easy on the sales page.
If you violate this rule of the MMO Holy Trinity, I assure you, there is a painful burn in your future lol (I wish I did not speak from experience).
Rule Number Three – Free
The third and final rule of the MMO Holy Trinity is this;
Make sure your product is teaching free methods to achieve the outcome or solve the problem and if it isn’t then make sure you provide free alternatives.
Example:
If you are teaching people how to write viral content and you use “buzzsumo” as a place to start strategy wise…
…guess what…
Buzzsumo has a free trial and then it costs money. Now you have sold people a product that teaches them how to do something that won’t work unless they buy something else (and in this case something very expensive).
That’s in direct violation of the Holy Trinity of MMO. You will definitely feel the refund fire if you go down this road lol.
If you are teaching people how to do something and you use a paid tool to accomplish the outcome…
…always, always, always….
…always…
..always…
…include a free alternative for those on a budget or just starting out. Trust me, this is important.
In fact all 3 of these rules are very important. They didn’t end up being called the Holy Trinity of MMO in my personal handbook for nothing.
All three of these rules earned their place by burning me and/or my peers every single time we tried to ignore them or not respect their power.
I can take you on a walk through some of my launch history.
Affiliate Command 2017 – launched at a price of $197 on the front end, thereby violating rule 1 of the Holy Trinity of MMO. It did not sell well.
Free Funnels – launched at a cheap price, promised and delivered easy to follow training, and utilized ALL FREE methods and resources to accomplish the job. It was a 5 figure launch.
Launch Levels VOL1 – launched with a promise of showing people a case study of EXACTLY what I did to produce that 5 figure launch. Guess what. The perception in the market is that launching products is very hard and involved. I didn’t address that in my product or on my sales page. That was a direct violation of rule number 2 of the Holy Trinity of MMO. And I got burned for it.
Cloud Money – launched with an idea of teaching people how to make money online, with nothing…not even a real computer to do it. It was cheap, it was easy to understand and take action on training, and it was utilizing ALL FREE services and methods. Another 5 figure launch.
Talk Show Empire – launched with the promise of showing people how to start a complete business utilizing the power of interviews.
Guess what…the perception in the market is that interviews are hard to do because you have to be on camera to do them, and also they are kind of a pain because you have to talk to other people and be social. I didn’t address those concerns on my sales page and it put me in direct violation of rule number 2 of the MMO Holy Trinity again. I got burned…again. Ended up not even finishing the launch cycle on this one, sales were so poor (I don’t recommend that btw, I should have at least finished the launch cycle).
I could go on and on here guys.
The point is what I am telling you is the absolute truth.
It doesn’t mean you can’t violate the Holy Trinity of MMO and win. This is the universe we are talking about…it prides itself on exceptions to the rule.
But what it does mean is I promise you, if you ignore these rules, you WILL have a massively more difficult time winning online in the MMO space. LIke running uphill versus running downhill.
Trust me, you can see the difference pretty fast once you go live.
Now look, all of this assumes you have a great product that will really help people and bring value to their lives and businesses.
Can you use the rules of the MMO Holy Trinity to sell garbage?
Sure you can. And people do…every day.
But…
Remember this…
Email marketing is the core of every sustainable online business. Good luck with your email marketing when your selling people garbage and ripping them off.
Anyways, that’s the Holy Trinity of MMO and it comes directly from the Kam Fatz personal “rules so I don’t embarrass myself…too much” handbook.
If you like this one and would like to hear more from my “don’t lose too much” handbook let me know in the comments below and I will have my team of highly trained mice get the message back to me…
…and I will seriously consider it. Lol.
That’s all I got. Hope you are doing awesome out there and may the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows!
Kam
How to Have a More Successful and More Fulfilling Business in 367 Words
We live in a time where options are boundless but clarity is in short supply.
The truth is no one ever succeeded at anything by having the most options. By knowing the most ways to do something or having the most tools…
…You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to succeed. You do need to be the most certain. The most clear.
Success in business and in life is earned through clarity of vision and purpose.
On social media, everyone has an opinion. I do, you do, your neighbor who judges you because you don’t cut your grass often enough does…
Disposable Heroes
Thoughts on Launching Digital Products and the Future of the EC
Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in somewhere?
I know someone who has.
Superman.
The Man of Steel was born on a planet far away that was pretty much destroyed when he was born.
And although he resides on earth, and fights the good fight, he is not one of us.
Gladiator…
I love that movie Gladiator. Have you ever seen it?
It’s set in ancient Rome around the time that Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the great stoic philosopher was in power.
I think it’s really cool because it’s about a guy who just wants to be a farmer, and hang out with his wife and kids, but he can’t because he has this very special skill set.
His name is Maximus, and he is a great soldier and leader of men. So of course the Emperor needs him to command his Army. Keep in mind, Maximus has been away from his family for 3 years…
I remember this one point in the movie, he turned to his assistant Cicero and asked him if he found it hard to do his duty.
Cicero looks at him and said:
ANATOMY OF A FAILED PRODUCT LAUNCH AND HOW TO FIX IT IN 12 PARTS
I want to take you behind the scenes of my most recent product launch, Talk Show Empire. I admit to struggling to put this post out. It requires me to humble myself. But I do so in the spirit of helping others succeed.
At the end of the day, it’s not about me and it never was. It’s always been about you.
PART ONE – THE SET UP
How to Win Online in 310 words
How to Win Online in 310 words (or a strategy for the disenfranchised would be entrepreneur)
Step 1. Turn off your computer, go to the park and take a walk.
Step 2. Get a pen and a piece of paper and find a quiet place. Write down a plan to be successful online. Give yourself 12 months to achieve this.
Step 3. Come to terms with the art of not playing it safe. Adopt a strict “beat fear into submission policy.” Accept the worst that could happen for what it is, your fear trying to keep you in a comfortable miserable place.
Step 4. Take your 12 month plan and break it into 4 three month quarter plans. Each should move you closer to your 12 month goal.
Step 5. Take your 4 quarter plans and break them into monthly, weekly and then daily do lists.
Step 6. Execute. The best laid plans are meaningless unless you respect them. Take action on your daily tasks. Get things done.
Step 7. Understand that the true key to success is to keep moving forward. Take time to celebrate your victories and to understand your losses but only a day or two. To win here you must keep moving forward.
Step 8. Respect your time. Give a dedicated amount of time each day to practical tasks that move your business forward. Your family and friends do not need to understand. They only need to understand that this thing is important to you. Success leaves clues. Some of those clues are scars.
Step 8. If you falter, see Step 6.
Step 9. If you grow cowardly, and you will know by the extreme uptick of second guessing and hesitation…see Step 3.
Step 10. Own every decision, every failure, every success like a boss. Blaming others is for victims. Blame yourself and fix it.
5 Things That Happened When I Slowed the Entire World Down Single-Handedly for 24 Hours!
Have you ever painted yourself into a corner?
I have. Literally and figuratively.
Not long ago I found myself painted into a pretty interesting corner.
You see, I make my living on the internet, and that is incredibly liberating because I set my own schedule, call my own shots, and just generally do all the things a boss does.
It’s good to be the boss.
So good that you might overlook a couple little details. Details like spending more time staring at a computer screen than walking around in the real world.
Who ever set out to build an entrepreneurial empire and imagined themselves staring at a screen all day like some mindless robot drone?
Not me man. That’s not my idea of a good time.
And yet…it was my reality.
I would be on the desktop…
I would be on the laptop…
Checking emails on the tablet…
Watching videos on the mobile…
…then for fun? You guessed it…xbox and netflix with a side of Hulu for good measure.
I started doing the math and I realized that I was literally spending more time staring at screens than actually looking at the REAL world.
It was kind of terrifying. It’s not just me either.
I was reading an article last year that said people are now spending an average of 8 hours and 41 minutes on electronic devices.
That’s 20 minutes more than they spend sleeping.
Basically we are getting to a place where we are just always connected.
It seemed somehow wrong to me to always be “connected.”
It has a sinister feel to it, like that movie “Needful Things” where the old guy in the Boutique is giving people all these cool items that help them…
…but really he’s the devil and everyone who gets one of those items is F*CKED!
Yeah, maybe I watch too many movies but that’s the kind of feel it has to me when you say people are spending more time staring at screens than doing anything in the real world.
I had an idea.
I wanted to know something.
What would I do if I didn’t spend ANY time online staring at screens?
How would I spend my day?
What would I think about?
Would I be productive?
How would I entertain myself?
What would my life look like if I took things back to 1995 for a day?
Challenging I know, since the internet is actually my job…but I never backed away from a challenge before.
So I decided I would spend 24 hours straight “off the grid” so to speak.
No internet.
No phone.
No television.
No xbox.
Nothing that involved me staring at a “black mirror.”
I thought that it would be a day filled with anxiety, fidgeting and boredom but what ended up happening to me was actually so eye opening that I have decided to go off the grid like this for 24 hours…
…every. single. week.
Here are 5 of my takeaways from disconnecting for 24 hours straight:
ONE – The world slowed down
One of the first things I did that morning was buy a newspaper because I figured I’d need something to do.
What I noticed was that I casually spent the entire day coming back to various parts of the paper and taking in the news. I felt like I was controlling the narrative of my life a little bit more.
I wasn’t just being blasted with a steady stream of new content. I picked that paper up and put it down as I went about my day. It was nice and it felt like the world had slowed down.
One thing that bugs me about the world today is how fast everything appears to move. News and information zip along at a blindingly fast pace.
I truly do not think we as a society even have time to process most of it anymore before we are bombarded with the next thing.
TWO – I actually enjoyed reading
I didn’t just skim. I must have bought a newspaper no less than 5 times in the last 5 months and never even got past the front page.
This day was different.
This time I was actually enjoying the ritual of reading the newspaper. And when my kids got home I gave them the comics section. It was a good feeling.
THREE – Going clear
As the morning turned into the afternoon I was thinking more decisive than normal. Decisions were coming a little easier. Things didn’t seem quite so jumbled.
I noticed that the majority of the articles in the paper were negative in nature or presented problems. Everything except the ads…
…they were pretty positive.
I saw an ad that took up a whole page that was done like it was supposed to be an article. It was cool because it was a hero’s journey style sales copy. It had pictures and testimonials and the pitch was at the bottom.
It made me smile because it was well done and I thought it was cool. It was the most positive thing in that whole paper.
Literally.
I know because I counted all the articles and kept score of the negatives, the positives, and the ones that presented problems to you (I.E. The homeless problem downtown is at an all-time high and the temperatures are dropping for the winter.)
The only positives in that whole paper was the sales copy of ads.
What do you think the meaning of that is?
I don’t think I would have had the focus to mess with it or even notice it in my normal life. Let alone fathom what it meant.
FOUR – Remembering Projects
As my focus improved I started remembering things that I wanted to get done that had been put off for months because I just felt there wasn’t enough time.
The internet makes you feel that way.
It speeds you up to this pace of content and you have this underlying feeling that you don’t have time for a lot that doesn’t have to do with being online…
It was an illusion.
I had the time.
I got these curtains put up in our house that my wife had wanted up for a while…
…I got some doorstops mounted that I had bought last month…
…and a book called, “How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative” that had been sitting on my bedside table for 5 months…
…I finally started reading it.
I had felt like I just didn’t have the time. That book had sat right next to my tablet for months which I always had time to pick up every single night.
I read 150 pages of that 256 page book. It has been a long time since I read that much of any one thing. A renewed sense of focus I guess you could say.
The book was absolutely fantastic and eye opening.
FIVE – Ideas come flooding through
I noticed that when I slowed the world down, ideas started coming to me. Ideas for products, for blog posts, for youtube videos.
I started the day with a blank composition notebook for any ideas that might come to me. In the morning I remember staring at it with a pen and just thinking…God…I have nothing to say.
So I gave up and started reading the paper. As the day went on though I started coming back to that little composition notebook and sketching out concepts for products. Notes for blog posts. Even ideas I had for songs.
I’m a musician but I haven’t written any new songs for years now or even played my guitar for months.
This article you are reading now was actually something I thought up that day when I didn’t “connect.”
It felt like as I disconnected from “devices” I began to reconnect to self.
SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT?
Here is what I believe.
There is good in the world, there is bad in the world, and then there is balance.
I do not think the internet is a bad thing. I like the internet. It changed my life for the better.
But I think that sometimes something so interesting comes along that if you are not careful you can get lost inside it.
The idea of having the world’s knowledge at your fingertips is one such thing.
A place where you can learn about anything, get instant validation and feedback for any ideas you might have, hear any song, watch any movie…
It reminds me of when Friedrich W. Nietzsche said, “”He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
I’m not interested in becoming a monster and I’m not interested in the abyss staring back into my soul.
Balance.
I will take 24 hours off every week from now on to reconnect with reality a little bit. I think it’s important.
What about you?
How has the internet changed the way you live your life?
What the hell did Friedrich W. Nietzsche mean when he started talking about monsters and abysses?
Let me know!
That’s all I got! See you in the next one!
Kam
The 10 Rules of Bohemian Marketing
The 10 Rules of Bohemian Marketing
As I write this, I am listening to the Dandy Warhols play Bohemian Like You. Are you familiar? Better go put it on if you’re going to read this.
Let’s rock…
What does it mean to be Bohemian?
Bohemian – a person who has informal and unconventional social habits, especially an artist or writer.
Is that you?
If you want to be successful in this online space where Barbarians slay Dragons and Wizard pull bags of gold out of thin fucking air…
…it better be.
Case in point…
“Cloud Money: A White Trash Guide to Producing Wealth on the Internet”
It’s a product about creating and selling digital assets.
I launched it for 4 days.
That “White Trash” thing got a lot of people talking. Some good, some bad, but a lot of energy.
And when the dust settled 4 days later Cloud Money, my funny little course with the politically incorrect name had generated $10,426.67.
Thanks haters.
RULE 1: Be Polarizing
MY GIFT TO YOU: 100% Free List Building Funnel
I’ve got a legit surprise for you.
Your own, fully hosted, 100% FREE
email list building web-funnel…
it’s called the DualSqueeze funnel strategy.
But this isn’t just ANY funnel.
It’s part of a free system that
gets OTHER PEOPLE to build your
email list FOR you…
Completely hands free. And won’t
cost you a dime.
That’s all I got! ENjoy the easy list building!
- Kam
