From the monthly archives:

February 2007

How You Feel About Money Affects How Much You Have

by Tatman

Have you ever noticed that the people with the most entitlement issues have the least amount of money? My own entitlement issues were Legendary, I kid not. I was sure the world owed me something for my troubles and if it didn’t give it to me, I was planning on taking it.

A mentor soon half-scoffed that I wasn’t owed anything, by anyone.

At first it was offensive that he thought that about me. Then when soul-searching revealed that it was true, that I felt I deserved or was owed some kind of a break because of the hard times I had in my life, it made me take a look at myself. That’s when I thought about working for it harder than I ever had before.

It’s painful to admit, but I was in a situation where I lawfully could have gone on public assistance or social security. This was post-entitlement me though, and I couldn’t bring myself to take a hand-out.

My money issues went so much deeper than that, though.

When I finally worked my way to what I started to believe was this great income, I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I thought it was too easy. All this time, money was coming to me at an inverse proportion to how hard I had to physically work. The less laborious it was, the easier and more rapidly money came to me.

I just couldn’t handle it.

Of course, I started to sabotage myself. I overspent in a period that should have put me on the road to wealth. I rested on my laurels when I should have kept working. It eventually stopped coming in more and more slowly and I was thrown into a panic.

The truth of the matter is that money has a certain type of energy. I promise I’m not going to get too touchy-feely on you. Here’s something to think about along those lines instead.

Broke people congregate together. Rich people try to hang out with people richer and smarter than them so they can learn.

Broke people hoard knowledge. The rich pass knowledge down.

Broke people complain about how much money they don’t have. Rich people talk about what they’re going to do with money they haven’t even made yet, then they go get it.

Broke people hoard pennies rather than saving intelligently. While a rich person isn’t a frivolous spender, they don’t jump over dollars to pick up dimes.

Broke people hate people who are rich and think that they owe them something. And yet it’s the rich people who were always the most willing to help me out when I was broke.

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I Wanted to Call This Article “Beastiality and You”

by Tatman

In the original version, though, when I came around to the point of the Beastiality, it didn’t quite work out. Here’s the basic point though: Reality marketing will always make you more money than fairy tale marketing.

Real marketing isn’t lying, and if you think it is, you’re probably broke right now. The two truths are related.

Marketing is, however, telling the truth is a creative way.

The first time someone said that to me, he was talking about cheating on his wife. It’s funny how some of us are hardwired to interpret creative truth-telling as lying.

In fairy tale marketing, we attempt to hypnotize our victim sucker potential client into believing that whatever we are selling is a cure-all, a magic elixir, and that after they give us just $1997 in three easy payments, they will experience a happily ever after.

A good marketer knows how to make the actual expected outcome just as desireable. And there is the difference. The best example of how this works in real life is the movies.

Ironically, the only way we’ll accept fiction is if it is true to life. We go to the movies to observe stories we know not to be true, by going through a process called “suspension of disbelief”. We go into sort of a trance, and feel as if the story is happening to us.

Bad movies have one thing in common – at some point, they trigger our bullshit meter. The same thing is true of bad marketing.

Did you know that the guys who made The 40 Year Old Virgin didn’t expect it to be a hit? The most common reason that people saw the picture, then saw it again, then bought the DVD, was because it was so true to life. Even that story one of the characters told at the card table about making love to a woman, and that her cat got involved rang true.

Not because it sounded like it actually happened – because it sounded like BS that someone would come up with on the spot.

(See what I mean? I worked in the beastiality, but it wasn’t enough for the original title to warrant it.)

You want marketing to make you rich? You want to sell products with low return rates? Mix in a healthy dose of reality. About the product, about you, another customer’s experience, it doesn’t matter.

If you can make it ring true, you can make it feel real. If it feels real, it is real. When it is real, it’s not a hard sell. When it’s not a hard sell, you make more of them.

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