By Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller

We had a little company outing the other day…we ate lunch at a local Tepan Grill. You know—where the guy makes a volcano out of the onion, throws eggs in the air and cracks them on their way down, makes the shrimp dance and jump and land in his chef's hat?? One of those places.

As we were marveling over his craft we got to talking to him and he made a very powerful statement which has very strong implications about success, both in marketing and life in general.

As he finished performing some remarkable feats with an egg, he explained to us that he learned the tricks by practicing outside in his back yard…in the grass. He realized that if he practiced in the grass, there was a chance the egg wouldn't break when it hit the ground. And he could try again with the same egg. He said he began with 4 dozen eggs. And after 48 tries he still hadn't gotten it right a single time.

He said he considered giving up. He knew all kinds of other tricks with shrimp and onions, etc. And he could toss the knives as well as anybody. Who needed to crack eggs mid air anyway? But he persevered.

The next day he went down and bought another 4 dozen eggs and tried again. This time, he got it right! But only once…

Once again thoughts of quitting entered his mind. But he remembered that he had committed himself to perfecting this routine. The next day…another 4 dozen eggs.

This time success came quickly, and more often. He went down to the store and bought another 4 dozen eggs. After consistent effort, his practice finally yielded excellent performance.

At this point in the store I was looking for light soy sauce and thinking how lucky he was that eggs were cheap. You're probably thinking…I get it…don't give up. The little engine who could…etc.

But that's not the point.

He went on to demonstrate that the margin of error was less than an inch. If he launched the egg outside of a tiny "sweet spot" on the surface of the spatula, the egg would fly up an the wrong angle and end up in somebody's lap. But when he hit it just right, it would fly straight up and come straight back down, striking the side of the spatula and landing as a scrambled mess.

Here's the interesting part…he said that if he gets nervous he gets timid and misses the sweet spot. And it's when that happens that he screws up and makes a big mess. But when he boldly goes for it, perfection.

What a striking statement. We have found the same thing to be common in marketing. You see, there's usually this "sweet spot" where your offer, your language, your market, the timing all come together and the marketing really works!

The bad news is that if you're outside that sweet spot, even just a little, your campaign may fall flat on its face.

That's where most people get to. They try to market a time or two then call it quits because it just didn't work. Well trust me…marketing works. Jimmy and I are two regular guys who will generate several million dollars this year out of a rented town house for an office with little more than a couple of sticks to run together and some good marketing brains.

The key is to learn how to hit that sweet spot. That's what we try to teach others through our coaching, training and consulting.

But the other key is to not be nervous. See, we realized a long time ago that when you are timid…and you're using scared money…and your marketing effort has to work…that's when you have a big problem. The timidity causes you to lose your edge and you blow it.

You ever notice that when you need to get that one big client…and everything will be OK when you land it…but then you never do? But when you have lots of irons in the fire and you're busy, the clients keep rolling in and you hardly have time to deal with them. That's because when you NEED to get the client, you won't. Who knows why. Probably because the client can tell that you're needy and that causes unease.

So how do you deal with it?

Well, first of all you have to know what you're doing. If you're just guessing and praying, forget it. So you need to learn the marketing craft from someone who knows what they're talking about. Buy a course, join a coaching program, hire a consultant, whatever.

Then, you have to properly fund your effort. That doesn't mean you need a million bucks. But you do need to be willing and able to lose the investment without losing your ass (or your business). Jimmy and I and our partners NEVER make a marketing investment we're not prepared to walk away from. And that was true even in the beginning days of our business (we opened our business with $200 in the bank account and our first client paid us $1075, so that's what we had to work with).

Think of the guy who had 4 dozen eggs. He wasn't too concerned with losing an egg.

Next you have to put the money and the knowledge together and yell "GO!" Don't be a wimp and say, at the last minute, oh I think I'm going to back down on my offer. "GO!" means you make a strong offer and take a gutsy approach. Anything else is forgettable. Usually, if a marketing piece doesn't make us at least a little uncomfortable, we re-examine and try to embolden it some how.

We once had a car dealer for a client in Dallas who spent about $250,000 per month on radio advertising. That's a lot to spend. Of course, when we met him, he spent about $30,000. But we ramped him (and his sales) up with a systematic process. These days he cranks out about $2,000,000 in gross profit per month. Well…he would always get on our case if our commercial for the month didn't generate a lot of complaint calls. He would accuse us of losing our edge or going soft. And he was right! There turned out to be a direct correlation between the number of complaint calls and the number of leads and new customers.

I'm not recommending that you be offensive in your ads (necessarily) but I am pointing out that this guy hit the sweet spot. He didn't get nervous and back down. And as a result, he got really, really rich.

So next time you're getting ready to place an ad or send a letter or do some other kind of advertising, think of that guy launching eggs from his spatula at the tepan grill. And think about what you can do to hit your sweet spot.