🐻 What Bears Know… That Marketers Oughta

I was talking the other day to a great marketer whose wife loves to go on adventures in the woods…

…hikes on backcountry trails where, as he told her…

…people have died.

“Hikes in the woods? No thanks,” he said.

“Remind me not to invite you to our next backcountry fishing adventure,” I said

And then I told him the true tale of the time a half-ton grizzly bear walked through my campsite, 20 feet from the tent where I slept, in southwest Alaska.

We’d flown in on float planes, deposited on a lake that flowed into a river that was…

…crawling with grizzlies. 

It was on the third night, the monsoony night, that the bear sniffed around our camp.

After sleeping as soundly as one can sleep during a monsoon, I crawled from my tent with a vague sense that I’d heard something scary — really scary! — during a sleepless moment.

My cousins were outside my tent comparing notes.

They’d heard it, too, splashing through the creek bed next to our tents.

“Had to be a bear,” Gordon said.

Ian nodded.

I shuddered.

Then we saw the tracks. Big as dinner plates.

I shuddered again.

Then came the stock-taking.

Profound questions like…

“How am I still alive?!?”

Turns out there’s a logical answer.

In mid-August, when we were there, the land in southwest Alaska is covered with ripe berries, and the rivers are filled with spawning salmon.

It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for grizzly bears. Easy pickins.

Bears know:

Why bother trying to take down a nasty, pepper-spraying, gun-toting, punch-throwing, boot-stompin’ human being, when you can get your fill with far less effort and risk?

Call it strategic targeting.

Grizzlies do it. So should you.

Riddle me this…

Who are your best, ripest, most plentiful prospects?

Where do they reside?

What are the costs and risks in pursuing them?

Which are easiest to land?

If you’re not asking these questions, you’re probably wasting time and energy chasing difficult prospects…

…while a bounty of opportunity surrounds you on the hillsides and in the streams.

Those are lessons straight from the direct response marketing playbook

Speaking of “direct response marketing playbook,” that could be the subtitle of Brian Kurtz’s masterpiece book “Overdeliver.”

But it’s not.

The actual subtitle is: “Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing”

That’s better than “…playbook.”

Anyhoo…

…Brian Kurtz knows more about direct response marketing than a gazillion grizzlies combined…

…and he packs all that knowledge into “Overdeliver.”

Ted Prodromou and I have chosen “Overdeliver” for the Mastermind Book Club, and…

…Brian Kurtz will attend our Book Club meeting on Thursday, October 26 when we discuss the book.

Strap on your boots, hike on over to the Zoom room, and join us next Thursday at 2 p.m. ET (1 p.m. CT)

Brian Kurtz’s marketing brain is like a ripe blueberry bush on a southwest Alaska hillside.

And you can pick it!

All you have to do is join the Mastermind Book Club here. We email meeting reminders (with the Zoom link) to members.

If you don’t have time to read the entire book, don’t worry.

You have time to read the introduction before the meeting. That introduction, alone, is a marketing masterclass.

You’ll have plenty to chew on for the meeting. You can finish the book (you’ll want to) when you have time.

Many members attend the meetings — and get lots of value — without reading the book.

One last thing…

…if you can’t join us on Oct. 26, join the club anyway. We record the meetings and post them in our online community.