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Dear Friend,

I’ve had most of my CD’s packed in boxes for the last couple years.

It made it a pain in the butt every time I wanted to listen to a CD and had to dig through boxes trying to find it.

So the old tightwad DD finally bought a couple CD stands this weekend and took all my CDs out of boxes.

I found a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about, including some CDs from the 90’s I played guitar and sang on. One of them was a project with Dane Clark, John Mellencamp’s drummer.

It was fun to listen to them. They brought back really good memories.

It was also nice to see how far I’ve come.

I had a pretty limited knowledge of harmony back then. I did as much as I could with the limited musical vocabulary I had. But ignorance of harmony and theory really held me back.

I’m a much better player now. I got better by seeking out masters who were wiling to teach me… and putting in thousands of hours of “woodshedding”.

See, I’m originally a self-taught guitarist. I learned to play guitar by ear… listening to records and copying what I heard.

Unfortunately, some of the players I copied were not masters. Only “B & C-level” rock players.

It worked OK to get going quickly… but it really held me back from getting better… for decades.

When I started getting instruction from master players, either in person or via books, CDs and videos, things really started to come together.

But some of the lessons didn’t click with me right away.

Sure, some stuff I got right away. Other more complex things didn’t really click until years down the road.

In fact, I had to hear some of the more difficult harmony lessons explained by several different musicians.

Then one day a musician taught the exact same lesson I’d heard dozens of times before… but explained it with a different twist and…

The Lightbulb Went On In My Head!

The concept I’d been struggling with for years finally made sense.

I OWNED that sucker and made it my bee-yotch!

Other players would hear me play my newly mastered improvisational ideas and say something like, “That was AWESOME! What in the world were you playing?”

“Oh, just some melodic minor licks”, I’d reply, as if it was something simple and easy.

Yeah, RIGHT!

Simple and easy, my tooshie! I struggled with that for YEARS!

Wanna know something else?

My foray into copywriting followed a similar path.

I didn’t have access to any books, mentors or copywriting courses. I didn’t even know any books existed on the topic.

In fact, I didn’t even know there was a term to describe what I was doing.

And I didn’t even know the Internet existed. It was still just something universities used.

The only thing I had access to was the sales letter Dan Kennedy used to sell his Magnetic Marketing course.

So I did exactly what I did with the guitar. I copied what I saw Dan Kennedy doing and used the same techniques to sell the info product I had created.

So, just like the guitar, I was originally a self-taught copywriter, too.

And it worked OK for a while.

I started a little mail order info product business that got me free from a dead end civil service job.

But after a while, I hit a brick wall.

Mentoring with Gary Halbert for a little over a year helped me blast through that brick wall… but not immediately.

Interestingly, just like with my guitar studies, it took YEARS before some of those Halbert lessons came together for me.

Some of them seem to come back at just the right time, too. It’s almost like Gary is still teaching me from beyond the grave.

With perfect timing, I can almost hear his voice in my head telling me lessons he taught me years ago… EXACTLY when I need them most.

Even though at that time, I didn’t totally understand a lot of the stuff Gary taught me, it was all filed away in my noggin for later retrieval.

And in the process of learning, moving forward, growing and sharpening my copywriting and marketing skills little by little, the “Halbertisms” jump out of my subconscious and “click” at just the right time.

So let me encourage you a little bit.

If it seems like you’re not really making any progress… and your projects and copy aren’t working as well as you’d like…

Keep Chipping Away At It!

Everything you’re learning… and even the lessons you don’t really get right now aren’t wasted. As you keep progressing and growing, they’re going to “click” at just the right time you’ll need them most.

And THAT is how you become an “overnight” success.

All the studying, practicing, failing and decades of work and sacrifice eventually come together all at once… at just the right time… to bring you “overnight” success.

And when it starts, it usually happens faster than you ever could have imagined. You’ll wonder where it was hiding all those years.

Trust your old pal, DD on this. I know of that which I speaketh.

If you’re consistently working, studying and doing what you need to do to make things happen… even though it may not look like it right now… you really are making progress.

It just hasn’t manifested yet.

Keep seeking out the people, information and resources you need… and putting in the work… and it’s gonna happen for you.

I promise.

All the best,

 

 

P.S. Just for giggles, wanna hear some of the old stuff I played on?

Don’t make fun, OK? These were recorded a long time ago and I wasn’t that good.

This first one is off Lee Behnken’s “Remember And Return” album. I played all the guitar parts and sang background vocals, too. Dane Clark was the drummer on this album.

[media:http://dobermandan.com/audio/Go Into The World.mp3]

Or click here to download the MP3.

Here’s one from “Final Frontier”, a prog rock project. We wrote all the songs in one day and recorded the CD in about two days. We had no idea what we were doing… but had a lot of fun.

[media:http://dobermandan.com/audio/Sunset.mp3]

Or click here to download the MP3.

I’m out. Talk soon.