Tag Archives: Marketing

Virus Of The Mind

Real or Staged?

A few days ago I was at this new bakery downtown. They had hired one of those guys dressed like a clown to stand in front and spin one of those signs around, to try and get traffic to come inside. It had caused quite a commotion, and there were plenty of people there for the grand opening. They had been advertising heavily beforehand, so they were going for a big splash on the first day rather than a slow spread through word of mouth.

I suppose that the slow spread through word of mouth marketing approach is more of a organic method, meaning they don’t really expect to have people running around town talking about their shop, it just kind of happens that way. Depending on word of mouth is a tricky marketing ploy, and I’m sure not too many small businesses rely on it exclusively.

There’s always those “engineered” word of mouth marketing plans, usually for movies, but sometimes for other things, although for movies they are primarily done on the Internet, and are referred to as “viral” marketing. A couple that stand out in my mind are “The Blair Witch Project,” and “Cloverfield.”

“Blair Witch,” although they did have several trailers in the theaters, had quite a big online presence. And “Cloverfield” took it a step further, going so far as to have fictitious myspace and facebook pages for the characters in the movie.

Another example of a “viral” marketing plan is that several million times viewed video “Where the Hell is Matt?” Now before I go bursting your bubble, let me say that the following is only my opinion, I have absolutely no inside information on the subject. Perhaps this has already been debunked in other sources, as the video is a few years old, but let allow me to share my opinion on the subject, despite how obvious it may seem.

The video is presented as a naturally occurring journey by this guy “Matt,” and whoever went along with him to hold the camera. It starts out with him giving directions to some “random” stranger to hold the camera in a specific spot, and then various clips are edited together, and whoever is holding the camera in the various spots is not clearly defined.

In many of the spots, it’s quite obvious it took some hiking to get there, and even in one place he’s underwater. So at the very least he had to enlist the support of a cameraman for more than just a few minutes.

There has been a few theories floated out there that the video is fake, and there are various special effects employed to make it appear he is in place where he really isn’t. While I don’t doubt that this “Matt” character actually went to all these places, I do doubt that it was as spontaneous as we are led to believe. I believe to be just as engineered and corporate financed as any viral movie marketing effort.

I believe this for a couple of reasons. The first is that international travel is not cheap, especially if you are winging it as you go along. It’s one thing to show up in a country and kind of make your way around, deciding each day where to go, but it’s quite different to travel from country to country in the same manner.

For one thing, not too many countries allow for a “landing visa.” This is where all you do is show up, and they stamp your passport with a 30-day visitors visa. Many countries require that you get a visa prior to visiting the country, and this requires a visit to that particular countries consulate, and in many cases an extensive itinerary, and proof of sufficient funds, as well as an air ticket leaving the country. You can’t just hitchhike down to the airport and buy a one-way ticket to some African country, for example. Before selling you a ticket, they’ll ask for to see your passport and visa.

So any trip to as many countries that were visited in that short video would require a huge amount of planning, and a lot of upfront cash to pay for all the airline tickets up front.

The story presented in the video, or about the video was some guy got laid off, had some cash, and decided to travel.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, but having been to a few countries, it’s been my experience that it requires a little bit more effort and planning than just hopping on a plane to some random destination. At the very least I believe that video was some kind of viral marketing effort backed by a big company with big money. For what reason, I have no idea. There is a blurb at the end of the video indicating some kind of sponsorship, but I’m not sure what that actually indicates.

My point in all of this is that word of mouth advertising is a powerful way to spread he word of any business, as it is much more believable and reliable than paid advertising. When we see a paid advertisement, we know they have a stake in whatever they are advertising. But when somebody that we know, or somebody that we suspect has nothing to gain by convincing us to buy some product or service, we are much more likely to believe them.

Because most successful word of mouth advertising plans are completely spontaneous and organic, it can be hard to consciously duplicate them. If you look at some popular Internet “memes” (Corey’s glasses, Chocolate Rain, Star Wars kid, etc.) which have spread over the past years, they don’t have much in common. People have tried to reverse engineer them, and then build new ones, but only with varying and seemingly random degrees of success. Even recent successful memes owe their success in large part to big media corporations picking them up and propagating them.

Even political campaigns, which try very hard to have a “grass roots” feel to them, are completely planned and engineered.

One thing is certain, thought, there are certain “memes” which spread much quicker and more readily than others, and some of the ones that have done so have literally changed the course of human history. Communism is one example. The idea was developed by some nobody in some small library, and then later propagated by a couple of opportunist politicians, and it literally changed the face of Europe within a few decades.

I suppose if it were possible to consistently engineer successful meme after successful meme, that would mean that human nature was completely predictable, and we would be at the mercy of marketers and social engineers who wanted nothing more to make us into obedient servants, like in “The Matrix.”

Luckily, human nature is not so predictable, and those that would control us aren’t always successful in their efforts. So long as videos of laughing babies and sneezing pandas spread around the world and are viewed by millions and millions of people, the human race is safe from exploiting itself into obedient slavery.

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Powerful Metaphysics

Powerful Metaphysics

Social Manipulation Or Shrewd Marketing?

Beware The Door Buster

I was waiting in line down at this new electronics shop last weekend. They had this massive grand opening, and they were going to give away this really cool flat screen TV along with a home theater system. They said they’d give out free raffle tickets to the first five hundred people that showed up, and then they’d draw later on in the afternoon to see who won. The catch, of course, was you had to be there to claim your prize. And since they gave out the free raffle tickets at eight o clock in the morning, they were assured that five hundred people would not only likely buy something that morning, but make plans to come back later. Marketing plans like this are fairly obvious. Give somebody a gimmick to get them in the door, and then do your best to up sell them while they are there.

Car dealerships are notorious for doing this. They’ll run an add in the paper for a certain make and model for a ridiculously low price. Of course they’ll say in the small print that there is only one particular car at that price, you can tell as they list the VIN, or Vehicle Identification Number of the car in question. Sometimes they’ll have three or four at that price. People see the ad, and mistakenly believe (to the hopes of the dealer) that all of the cars are at that price.
Then when they show up, they’re told they all sold out. When that happens, the dealership has two powerful tools of influence naturally working in their favor.

The first is something called “Commitment and Consistency,” as pointed out in the often referenced “Influence, Science and Practice,” by Robert Cialdini. When people make a public commitment, they are much easier to be persuaded to do something that is along the lines of that commitment. Political campaigners know this. When they phone people the week before an election and ask them if they are going go out and vote, most people naturally say yes. Since they’ve made a public commitment, even to a complete stranger over the phone, they are much more likely to vote than the average citizen who hasn’t made such a commitment.

By going to the car dealership in search of a good deal on a car, you make a certain commitment. It’s not like the car salesman pulled you in cold off the street.

Another powerful factor they have working for them in this case is social proof. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we humans are pack animals and are extremely susceptible to crowd behavior. We love to follow fashions, stick to the status quo (unless you are a singing basketball player), and follow the crowd. So when you show up, and the car you wanted is “all sold out (all one of them),” it gives the impression that many people are after the same car, which makes it more desirable.

So by putting those cheesy ads in the paper, and getting you to make a trip to the dealership, just by showing up you have two powerful forces of social influence guiding you to buy a new car.

It’s no wonder that stores use the same tactics. They work, and they work beautifully. Stores use them so much because they work so well. All those incredibly insane “door busters” that you see the day after Thanksgiving, or black Friday, are carefully designed instruments of social manipulation. In case you are unaware, the reason it’s called “Black Friday” is in reference to the black ink bookkeepers use when they are making a profit. In this case black is very good.

To make matters worse, sometime they’ll have free giveaways, but the “winner” is actually a ringer. A plant that works for the store. Even though this is clearly immoral and unethical, it’s pretty hard to uncover and prosecute. The only danger lies in a store being found out, and it’s business getting a bad reputation. Even when people have a suspicion that the winner may indeed be a “ringer,” they still line up, “just in case.” We humans can be terribly easy to manipulate sometimes.

If you can figure out a way to get the free stuff, without giving in to the temptation to buy whatever they convincing you to buy through their masterful social engineering, so much the better.

One thing I usually do in a case like the free TV giveaway is only take five dollars with me, and leave all my credit cards at home. That way even I’m persuaded by the slickest of salesman, I won’t be able to buy anything. Hopefully by the time I race home to get my credit card, I’ll stop and wonder if I really do need that beef jerky machine. It’s not like I eat beef jerky every day, or even once a week. Why in the world do I need to cook the stuff?

So as I was standing there in line, looking at all the awesome electronic gadgets that I would surely buy if I were rich enough, I started talking to the guy behind me. He was involved in several MLMs and told me places like this were a great opportunity spread his business. People were surrounded by all this stuff that they wished they had enough money to buy, so naturally they would be open to opportunities to make more money, at least in principle. This guy said that he had great success recruiting people for his “downline,” at these “free” offerings. He scans the paper every week, and goes to as many as these as possible. He said the best time is right before the actual drawing, when people’s interests are the highest.

He said he was kind of “piggybacking” on the social manipulation of the business. He would show up in the morning, talk to a few people in line, and not mention anything about his business. Then he would come back that afternoon, strike up a conversation again with the people he already met, like he was an old friend. Then while the excitement and expectation was high, he would slowly ease the conversation into his well-crafted sales pitch.

He said that if he only gets one person per “giveaway,” then it is well worth his while, because in the long run, each person that joins his “downline” is worth potentially thousands of dollars, if not more.

And, of course, I didn’t win the TV, and I bought this cool little vacuum cleaner for my keyboard, that plugs into my USB port. And a new computer mouse, because my old one, was, kind of, you know, needed replacing. Or something.

Lessons From An End Of The World Marketing Genius

Do You Really Know What You Are Getting Into?

I was hanging out downtown the other day, and ran into this particularly strange character. He was one of those guys that have the big signs warning of the impending end of the world. Sometimes his sign will say “The End is Near,” and or other similar messages. Sometimes though, his signs don’t make any sense whatsoever. Like the other day he had a sign that said “They are aware of all of what you think you don’t know,” which I had to read a couple times before I realized it really didn’t make any sense.

So naturally, being the curious guy that I am, I went and asked him. I was kind of half expecting him to be a complete nutcase, and give me some wild reason that masked his complete and utter detachment from reality. But what I got was something altogether different.

It was kind of like that time when I was a kid back in boy scouts. Our troop would go on these yearly hikes. They were about fifty miles, and took about a week. To make sure we were all up to snuff, we would have to go on three “qualifying” hikes prior to the big one. There would be five successive weekends where we would the troop would leave early Saturday morning, hike for eight or so miles, camp out, and then return on Sunday. You had to go on three of these five in order to go on the long one. The scoutmasters that went along didn’t want to be stuck carrying some kid’s stuff because he couldn’t carry it himself.

That had happened a couple years before. They didn’t have the three-trip rule, and just went straight away into the weeklong hike. There was this one kid that joined up, and his mom assured the scoutmaster that he would be able to handle it. After about two miles in, everybody realized this kid should be anywhere but on a hiking trail with a thirty-pound pack.

The scoutmasters divided up his stuff until his pack was maybe five pounds. Even then he struggled. Hiking up hills in high elevation where the air is thin is not the easiest thing in the world, and this kid was proof. His mom had unloaded this kid on the troop to take care of him for a week, and the adults all had to unload him of his stuff. And the rest of us kids had to pretend to be nice to him while we walked slower than normal so he wouldn’t be left behind. Talk about a burden.

I read this book once that was talking about business success. It said that the most successful people are one’s that are able to carry their own weight, as well as offering something to the organization. There is a certain winning combination. It gave several examples of different job interviews, and some of the answers people gave. Several of the unsuccessful candidates were keen to find out things about the job like vacation time, benefits, how often they can get raises, and so on. Managers naturally weren’t to anxious to hire these people.

Others on the other hand were a little too much in the opposite direction. They were about how good they were, how many massive skills they had, and why they should be hired. Managers didn’t really like these people because they didn’t really take much of an interest in the particular organization. They seemed to have a one size fits all ego that expected the world to bow down in awe of its skills.

The ones that were the most successful were the ones that were confident in their abilities, and were able to elicit certain aspects of the business, and then explain to the interviewer how their particular skills would be of specific benefit to the company.

The conclusion of this book was that if you are ever interviewing for jobs, to first make a list of some skills you have, and keep a mental list of several examples of how you demonstrated those skills in the past. Then when you are in the interview, find out what kind of person they are looking for, and then give examples from your own past that show you are an obvious choice for the organization. Obviously it helps to do a little bit of research before going to the interview, but with the amazing amount of information at your disposal through the Internet, that should be fairly easy.

The bottom line is to not only know your skills, but be able to find several examples from your past, and be able figure out as many creative ways as possible to show how they are applicable to as many situations as you can. This will get you a lot further than showing up with your proverbial hat in your hand asking about benefits and vacation time.

After we finally made it back after what seemed like the longest week in backpacking history, we never saw that kid again. He was quiet all the way back, and after a few polite and subdued goodbye’s that was that. I did see our head scoutmaster having a word with his mom. It didn’t appear to be an angry exchange, but he did seem to be explaining several things to her, and she appeared to be listening as though she had made some kind of a mistake. She kept nodding her head in what looked like sincere appreciation.

Perhaps she didn’t pawn him off to the troop after all. Maybe she just misunderstood what she was getting her son into. Many people don’t have a good idea of what they are getting themselves into. Which is exactly why the troop instituted the three qualifying hike rule to make sure everybody knows what’s coming when we went on the week long fifty mile hike.

I have to admit, thinking back to those fifty-mile hikes, I had some of the best times of my childhood. Fishing in pristine lakes, being in huge beautiful valleys surrounded by snow capped mountains without any other people in sight except for my friends and me. Seeing bears and deer and all kinds of other animals in their natural habitat is something you don’t ever forget.

It turned out this guy was doing marketing experiments for a church. There was a certain church in the area, whose name he made me promise I wouldn’t repeat. They were testing different marketing slogans. It was a rather big church, a non-denominational Christian church, and they were always trying to expand their members. They hired this guy from an advertising company, and would come up with different slogans for his message board, and simply note people’s reactions.

He would measure their reactions by how often they did double takes, if they slowed down when they passed him, or if they came up and talked to him. He told me that so far, the message that had a positive spin had the most effect on people, with messages of imminent world destruction coming in a close second.

So if the marquee messages at your local church alternate between peace and love, and threats of eternal hell bound damnation, now you know why.

The Paradox Of Choice

Which Do You Choose?

Which would you rather have, a big juicy hamburger, or a cracker with some peanut butter slapped on top? How about a nice two-week relaxing vacation on the beaches of Hawaii versus a free coupon worth on rental from your local video store? Or how about a date with Megan Fox compared to that homeless woman you saw the other day?

These may seem like obviously easy choices. But what about these:

You are standing next to the train tracks. There is a split right where you are standing. There is a train coming. As it stands, the strain is going to veer left. You have access to a switch that can make the train veer right if you flip the switch.
You notice there is a stranded bus filled with school kids on the tracks to the left. If the train continues on its course, it will hit the bus and kill the kids. But to the right, there is one fat guy working on the tracks. If you throw the switch to change tracks, the train will avoid the kids, but it will kill he fat guy.

What do you do?

If you do nothing, a busload of kids will die. If you throw the switch, you will save the kids, but you will be directly responsible for killing some fat guy.

Or how about this:

There is a boatload of kids drifting down a river, about to plunge off a waterfall. You are standing on a bridge. There is the same fat guy walking across the bridge. If you run up and push the fat guy off the bridge, he will hit the boat and diverge it from the waterfall, and save the kids.

What do you do?

Many people polled in various studies would pull the switch in the first scenario, as they see it as an act of saving the kids. But few people would actually run up and push the fat guy off the bridge.

Why?

They (those they people again) did a study where they took some students and had them stick their hands in a bucket of water, and then guess the temperature. Then they had the same students stick their same hands in the same water, but at the same time, they had them stick their other hands in another bucket of water, that was either really hot or really cold. When the other bucket was really hot, they underestimated the temperature of the test bucket. When the water was really cold, they overestimated the temperature of the test bucket.

Or how about this. It is not uncommon for real estate agents to show a potential client a really crappy house in a really crappy neighborhood that is within their stated price range. Then they show them another much better house, in a much better neighborhood that is priced slightly higher than their stated price range.

They’ve found that this works really well to convince them to increase their price limits. By showing them the first house (which is owned and maintained by the real estate company) they effectively make the second house look like a bargain.

Restaurants have also found this trick works really well when selling wine. If they have a bottle (or several bottles) they are trying to unload at, say, fifty dollars a bottle, the wine won’t sell very well if it is the most expensive bottle they have. But they’ve found by adding another bottle, priced at seventy five to a hundred dollars, they increase sales of the fifty dollar bottle significantly. It looks better in comparison.

Our brains don’t’ like to choose in a vacuum. We need to have something to compare our choices to. If the choice is only to buy a bottle of wine or not, we usually will choose not. But if it’s an expensive bottle or a cheaper bottle, we’ll choose the cheaper bottle.

This is a known psychological trick that has been used in sales for many years. We like to feel like we have a choice, like we are smart enough to evaluate those choices and make the best decision that we can. But our short hand thinking process can easily be hijacked by marketers who want to sell us something that we really don’t need.

There is one simple rule to avoid being duped. Simply know going in, before being presented with choices, what is important to you, what price you are willing to spend, and what options you want. And compare everything you see only to your list of options and your acceptable price.

Of course, if you are a marketer, and you are trying to sell something, say online, it would help dramatically to include something similar that is priced significantly higher. That way people will think the real item you have for sale is a bargain and they will be much more likely to buy it.

For example, if you run a product review page, and you are selling item “X” for fifty bucks, try and find a similar item, with only slightly better features, for two hundred bucks. Item “X” will seem like steal in comparison.

Another trick that has been proven very useful in this regard is to include only a little bit of information about the first, more expensive item, and then very detailed information about item “X.” That way, item “X” will not only seem cheaper by comparison, but your potential buyers will feel much more informed, and feel they are making a wise buying decision.

Happy marketing, and don’t push any fat guys off any bridges.

How To Attract Customers To Any Shop

The other day I was walking down the street, minding my own business, like I usually do. Of course, I don’t always mind my own business, there’s times when you just can’t help but to involve yourself in the affairs of others. This almost always goes well, and people don’t generally object to me imposing on their situation, because it’s usually with a helpful comment of appreciation.

But in this particular case, I was just focusing on the thoughts that were in the forefront of my mind, which were rather jumbled, which made this a little more difficult than normal. Sometimes I have such clarity of thought and purpose that I go after and achieve my daily objection with incredible focus. This was not one of those days.

So there I was, staggering down the street, and suddenly I bumped into a rather festively dressed circus clown. He was doing an advertisement for some grand opening of a shop of some sort. When I happened across him, he was on his break, as he was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette. I sat down, suddenly changing my plans to not involve myself in the business of others.

This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. I had never spoken to a circus clown before, especially one that was on his break taking drag after drag on an unfiltered cigarette.

I asked if he was always a clown, and he replied that most of the time, he was. He didn’t do kids parties, because those were too dangerous. He did mostly advertising, marketing gimmicks, and the occasional rodeo when they needed somebody to fill in. The particular job that he’d been assigned on that particular day was to simply stand outside a shop (which turned out to be a furniture store) and wave to customers to draw them inside the store.

Now there’s a couple of conversations I’d like to at least listen in on. One is the person who goes out, maybe to pick up his laundry, or drop off their kids at day care, or whatever. The last thing they want to do is buy some furniture. But lo and behold, there is this funny clown standing there on the sidewalk, and they can’t help but to go inside and see what’s what. And before they know it, they’ve purchased an entire dining room set.

The conversation I’d like to hear is when their friends come over, and ask them how or why they decided to buy a new set of furniture. I’d like to hear them explain that a voiceless cigarette-smoking clown convinced them.

The other conversation I’d like to hear is the furniture shop owners deciding how they were planning on promoting their grand opening, or sale, or whatever. And how exactly they decided on hiring a clown. Did they have three or four choices, and they clown was there best one? Personally, I’d choose a couple of bikini models, but that’s just me.

There was a story in the news a while back about a sandwich shop that had a bikini model, not even a real one, the kind that model clothes in department store windows, out front during lunch time. It was a fantastic success, and drew a large lunch crowed. Until somebody complained to the city council. It seems that having a bikini mannequin is against some city ordinance or something, so they had to put a t-shirt on her.

So maybe they wanted to put a couple of bikini models out front, but they got out-voted by the pro-clown faction of their marketing division, perhaps due to fears of repercussions from the community. Who knows?

When I asked Mr. Clown (I never did get his name) how long he’d been doing his, he said he was in his third year as a clown. He found out about it from an ad on craigslist. He didn’t tell me how much he got paid, but he did say that the benefits were pretty good. He got paid extra if he could juggle several balls at once.

So after a few minutes of pleasant conversation, I went on my way, sure I’d see the clown again somewhere.

Embrace Your Wickedness And Dominate All That Is

Once upon a time there was a little cat. A little too old to be called a kitten, but not quite a full-fledged cat. Kind of on the border between kitten-hood and cat-hood, whatever that means. He was still trying to figure out the difference between hunting for his own food, and chasing for the simple pleasure of it.

He was not a domestic kitten; he was what some people would call feral or wildcat. He lived in a fairly suburban neighborhood, and if he were lucky, people would give him scraps, but as he was getting older and older, and les and less cute, that was happening less and less frequently.

Before it was easy, he’d see a mouse, and chase it only for fun. Most of he time he wouldn’t kill it, because then it would stop running away, and it wouldn’t be fun to chase it any more. During those times he never chased out of hunger, because there was always a kind neighborhood kid who would put out a bowl of milk for the cute kitten.

The first time he had gone for three days without any food. The way it happened was kind of automatic, instinctual. He was chasing a mouse for fun, (or so he thought) and when he got close to it, something clicked inside him, and he immediately devoured the little rodent. While he was eating it he felt incredibly proud and adult like. He had chased down and killed his first meal all on his own.

But soon after that, he found another bowl of milk. He wasn’t sure if it was for him, or for another cat, but there it was. Free food. So, of course he ate it. And somebody saw him, and thought he looked cute. They even took pictures of him, and put out more milk the next morning.

Pretty soon, he had forgotten all about the mouse that he’d caught, and how good it’d made him feel. He soon fell back into the lazy habit of trying to look as cute as possible in order to secure a bowl of milk.

That was over four days ago.

His stomach was emptier that it had ever been. And how something completely strange happened when he saw the movements of a mouse out of the corner of is eyes. Instead of getting that playful feeling of, well, cat and mouse, he felt something completely different and unexpected.

Fear.

What if he didn’t catch the mouse? Before, when he was only chasing for fun, it didn’t really matter if the mouse got away. It’s not like it was important.

But now, what if he chased the mouse, and he couldn’t catch it? Would he go hungry? He might even starve to death. If the neighborhood kids saw him chasing and eating a mouse, they certainly wouldn’t think he was cute, and the free bowls of milk would stop for sure.

He saw two mice, and because he hesitated the mice quickly scurried away before he could even get into proper hunting position.

His fur was getting dirty, and he was starting to get skinny. He was becoming more and more weak with every day. The children and old ladies who gave him free milk were now terrified of him; certain he was carrying some kind of horrible disease.

He had all but given up hope, when he saw a very ferocious, very lean and strong looking alley cat. One that he was almost afraid to make eye contact with, for fear of being killed on the spot.

“How long has it been?” The alley cat asked.
“Six days.” The young cat replied.

“How many kills?”
“One.”
“Accident?” the old cat asked.
“Yea. I was just playing, and then before I knew it, I was eating.”
“Yea. That happened to me to the first time.”
“Really?” the young cat perked up. Maybe there was hope after all.

“Yea. Then like you, I went a while without catching anything. I was afraid. Like you probably are. Then something just snapped. I had a moment of clarity when I realized that if I don’t kill, I won’t eat. Embrace your wickedness. You will be a much more skillful hunter if you chase for the kill, rather than chasing for fun.”

“But what if I fail?”

“If you don’t hunt, you already have. By hunting, you’ve absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”

Very soon thereafter, this young cat became a killing machine, and dominated his neighborhood.

How To Build A Successful Business

The other day I was driving down the freeway, listening to the radio. Suddenly a song came on that I hadn’t heard in a long, one that reminded me of my university days. My friend that was riding with me was eating some bread that he had just picked up from a new bakery that was down the street from his apartment. It was one of those places that is trying really hard to establish itself, giving out free samples, trying to get as many customers as possible. He hadn’t planned on buying the bread, but couldn’t help it when he was drawn in by the aroma as he walked past.

The lady that runs the shop is particularly interesting. I think this was her fourth or fifth business that she has set up. All of her previous businesses were very profitable. What she does is she has an interesting way of identifying food-based niches in small neighborhoods. She figures out what kind of restaurant or food shop would likely be successful based on what other shops are already in the neighborhood, and have already been successful. Then she sets up a shop, generates a lot of loyal customers, and the turns the shop over to one of her assistants in kind of a franchise deal. Her assistant makes half the profits, and she takes half the profits.

She then goes to another neighborhood, and does the same thing. Other that go around and set up businesses based on what they like don’t do as well. For example if somebody only wanted to open up a hamburger shop, sometimes they’d be successful, other times they wouldn’t. Some neighborhoods have a real need for a hamburger shop, while others don’t. Because she is very flexible in her approach, and provides what the market demands, she always seems to make a lot of money.

I remember when I first moved into the dorms in college. We had a party, and snuck a keg of beer into the room. While we were drinking, a friend of mine started telling me about his philosophy professor. He was saying that those that are the most successful in life are the ones that figure out what they want, and then figure out how to mold reality around t heir desires. He said the most important thing is to look underneath want you want to find the underlying desires. Most things that people think they want are really based on an underlying desire, which can be applied to most anything. The mistake many make is trying to fit their surface wants into society, without focusing on their underlying desire.

If you can figure out what your base desire is, you’ll be surprised when you find that almost anything can satisfy it. Which is why we had the party in the first place. And as it turned out, my friend actually did have some left over bread that he could share with me, until we finally go to our destination.

I even remembered what that song was, so I could down load it from iTunes when I got home. I like it when stuff like that happens, don’t you?