Pilots must have 1,500 hours of flight time to become a commercial pilot. That would be more than two months of flying if done nonstop, 24 hours a day. If you flew two hours a day, every day, it would take you more than two years to log those hours. Plus, this required hands-on experience is on top of the classroom study and homework necessary to qualify for flight time.
But that’s what we want from the people who have our lives in their hands.
Recurring training is just as rigorous. Each year pilots face a pass/fail oral exam where they must recite, from memory, procedures in response to emergency situations and details like the maximum crosswind limit on a wet runway with visibility less than three-quarters of a mile.
But that’s what we want from the people who have our lives in their hands.
After pilots pass the oral test, they must then take two four-hour tests in the simulator, also pass-fail. That’s when the pilots must succeed in spite of malfunctions, fires, wind sheer, one-engine landings, instrument approaches and anything else the examiners can think to throw at them. And if everything isn’t what it should be, the pilots fail and are grounded.
But that’s what we want from the people who have our lives in their hands.
Information marketers need only read a book and follow some simple steps to earn more money in a month than an airline pilot earns in a year. And we resent it when it doesn’t happen immediately.
Is that what we expect from ourselves? After all, we have our own lives and the futures of our families in our hands. Yet we resent having to sit through 12 hours of videos to learn something (and forget actually practicing what we have learned).
A number of people have contacted me through email or Facebook asking for help. Some have bordered on begging for help, with long stories about their dire straits. They hoped I would help them turn around their financial futures, and they put their lives into my hands.
I gave this a lot of thought. After all, what did I have to say that would fit into an email that I hadn’t already included in the five books I’ve written, the hundreds of resources on the IMA site as well as the InfoMarketingPyramid.com fast info-marketing business start-up course I’ve created?
I came up with a standard reply. I set them up with 12 classic sales letters, written by legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. These letters were all extremely successful, generating millions of dollars in revenue. I asked them to rewrite each sales letter, by hand, at least 10 times. And I encouraged them to keep rewriting the letters until they could write them out from memory. This exercise ingrains the sales methodology into the brain, in the same way pilot training ingrains the correct procedures into a pilot’s brain.
Most of the people I tried to help were extremely disappointed. Only one person has ever done the exercise to my knowledge. And he was very successful. I lost contact with him in 2011, but at that point he attributed a lot of the newfound success from his info-marketing business to his experience with me.
Training and practice are critical. The skills you learn from copying a master, over and over again, will stay with you for life, help you craft offers, create copy and build a successful business. Yet too few are willing to do the work. Thus, few enjoy the results.
We expect our airline pilots to go through extensive training and annual recertification. Of course, they hold people’s lives in their hands. And experience has told us this high level of training is necessary for success (as defined by no crashes).
Then, in our own lives, we expect perfection, a thriving business, a burgeoning list and excited joint venture partners because someone has told us it’s the easy way to get wealthy.
It’s certainly easier than becoming a pilot. But you still must study, practice and work.
I invest in training all the time. I invest my time into learning—and practicing. I invest in consultants and coaches to help speed up implementation. I consult with a coach monthly who is on-call via email if I have a question or run into a roadblock I need help overcoming. I invest in these tools because my life is in my own hands. I must make sure I have the tools and the resources I need to make myself successful.
We often expect too much of ourselves and too much from tools like books. Books and courses are hugely important resources; however, reading a book doesn’t create a skill. That only comes with practiced application, hopefully under the steady guidance of an experienced coach to help point out the opportunities to fine-tune performance.
Business is no different than football, golf or flying a commercial airliner. Training, practice and testing are important to success. Give yourself the tools and the room you need to grow. Set realistic goals and expectations, work toward them and make sure you have the resources you need.
That’s what you want from the people who have your life in their hands.
What do you think? Do you believe in training, or should info-marketing be easier than that? Scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.
Best wishes,
About Robert Skrob
