Man, I gotta tell you, I'm the luckiest guy in the world! I know that is an
old cliché, but in my case it's the truth. I actually
am the
luckiest man in the world.
I have been blessed and showered with far more good fortune than I deserve
based on merit. Just about everything wonderful life has to offer I've
experienced. I have seen, tasted, heard, felt and loved a lot. I can't imagine
what else there could be that is better than what I've had already, but I can't
wait to find out!
Though I've accepted long ago that I am the luckiest man in
the world, I've never really known why. The closest I can come to an
explanation is #1. People, all people fascinate me. What they do, why they do
it and who they do it with never fails to draw and hold my attention.
#2. I ain't afraid of sh**. I'll go anywhere, eat anything, do anything
and the weirder it is the more I like it. #3. Even if things go in a direction
that most people would consider wrong, I just see it as an adventure and another
opportunity to have one more great story.
I believe it is my attitude and appreciation of adventure that makes me so good
at understanding human motivations.
Studying and understanding people and why they do the things they do has
sustained me and my lifestyle. I've always been able to make enough money to do
whatever I've wanted to do by being able to understand those human motivations
to help me be a better marketer.
Contrary to popular belief, selling is not about tricking people into buying
what they don't want. Yes, there are liars and thieves but that is not selling.
That is lying and stealing.
Selling is about getting people to trust you enough to tell you their needs or
desires and you satisfying those needs or desires. It is not always easy but it’s
certainly not complicated.
You may be questioning that statement in the context of online marketing. You
may not see just yet, how you get anyone to open up to anyone else when we're
talking about online, but believe it or not, it is exactly the same process
except you are not eye-to-eye. The Guru is showing you that process little by
little with each post he makes. If you read my last post about the Fallacy of
SEO and How to Make Money From It, you can see a connection and a path we are
heading down.
Well, today I want to use a video I shot this past weekend
in a wonderfully strange and exotic place that illustrates not just the essence
of online marketing but of all marketing!
That not being afraid of sh** thing kicked in this past
weekend and I was up for an adventure. All by myself, I jumped in a rickshaw
and had him take me the heart of a city that is more than 1,000 years old. BUT,
that’s not the fascinating part. The part that turned me on so much was walking
through the middle of living history. Being able to see, hear, smell, taste and
feel business being conducted exactly the same way it was being conducted when
Jesus chased the money changers from the temple was very cool.
This is the very core of commerce. This is what marketing is
all about. All the technology, all the college degrees, all the billions spent
on advertising each year it all started here and is still going on. So, we may
use computers and eye-tracking studies and pie charts but we use those things
to do what these people are doing right here and all those technological
advances has not changed the basic motivation of the buyers and the sellers.
It is about people. Not technology. The technology is a
tool. A means to and end and to use that tool you need to accept that those
tools are there to help you do what this video shows being done for thousands
of years.
I am so lucky to be here! To see this first hand was an
experience I will never forget. It has taught me more about marketing and sales
in a day than I’ve learned from most of the marketing books I have read. It was
a wonderful day and I hope you can see even a glimpse of what I saw.
What I’m hoping you take away from this is the simple
concept of realizing that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
What makes this process work is the same thing that makes the process work
online. It is about placing yourself in a position where the people most likely to respond to your message can see you and
then interacting with those people.
Notice the bolding on PEOPLE.
The video is short and even if you miss the correlations I’m
hoping to make between their job and yours, I think you’ll find the visual
interesting and unique. Unless of course you happen to live in a 1,000 year old
city and shop like this all the time. The people I was videotaping didn‘t seem
to think there was anything unique about themselves at all. :)