Run Forrest, Run!

And with that we see a poignant story about a unique man who seemingly walks into fame and fortune without even noticing. This man, Forrest Gump, from his name to his demeanor seems ridiculous, and retarded. But, as his momma told him…Stupid is, as stupid does.

I could not help but notice deep truths that were buried in this gem of a movie/novel that has been part of some serious political discussions and even controversy. What I want to focus on is how a simple man of simple truths can indeed walk through life and push the problems it brings with it aside almost as if those problems were nothing more than smoke.

The first truth that Forrest utters we have already quoted: “Stupid is as Stupid does…” The fact that Forrest is a bit slow is completely balanced by the fact that he believes in black and white truth. Stupid people are those who do stupid things – and it is ironic that it is Jenny he says this too first, as she epitomizes stupidity throughout the movie with every act she takes, except for the one of being Forrest’s friend, and at the end of the movie, finally his love.

The other thing that Forrest does is that he never accepts failure, in fact he is incapable of even imagining what failure is. He simply does whatever he does. Once he has decided on a course, he simply does it, obstacles are nothing more that a challenge that has to be met, without any consideration of being stopped by them. In other words, do…or do not. Anything else is just you standing in the way.

There are many other things in this story that I could point to, but these two are the real gems that if we put into practice in our own lives, will lead to success in our endeavors:

1.)Don’t do stupid things.
2.)Whatever you have decided to do, do.

Ability varies, education is not wisdom, and unemployed geniuses can be found on every street corner. The truth is that those who succeed have decided that they will succeed long before they even set their hand to their next project.

Success is as Success does.

David T. McKee

Your Basic Blue Alian Life-Form

There have been many times where I have read a good story and wished that I could live in that story.  The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis comes to mind, and Lord of the Rings.  Harry Potter perhaps – and many others.  Nevertheless, while a good story can touch on heart-strings and even the deep spiritual longings of our soul, never have I entertained the idea that it would be better to be dead than not be in some story – as I reflect on it, I realize that even were it possible, those stories had their share of difficulties.  It would not have been an adventure otherwise.

But alas, now I read this…

Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues

According to this article, there are many people who have seen this movie about a race of ten foot blue people called the Na’vi who live in an idyllic world called “Pandora”. They live in perfect harmony with their environment – in other words they have no desire beyond their existence and are in essence no different than animals in a tropical rain forest. They are portrayed as intelligent and gentle, but can be violent when pissed off.

Now I have several beefs with the movie, not the least which is how it portrays humans as greedy “capitalists” intent on extracting valuable resources from this “exo-moon” without any regard to the indigenous life.  This is a tired plot, and frankly is proven untrue by the fact that the movie was made by HUMANS.  But I digress….back to the issue on human self esteem.  Still, the movie is certainly cool and despite the plot issues I mentioned, it has some very cool qualities.  Nevertheless, it is a movie of a utopia that does not exist, and in our current state, cannot.

We have a group of individuals who do not have the self-esteem to realize that their own lives in the real world is more worthy than this pseudo-life they have seen on the screen. They actually want to live as Na’vi and not as themselves – some even to the point of contemplating suicide!

To what can we attribute this kind of thinking? One who desires to become a master achiever in life certainly would not want fall into this kind of trap – so we should try to understand why someone might.

To me, this kind of thinking has two central areas: a dissatisfaction with their own lives, and an unrealistic understanding of reality. The sad truth is – even if their wish were to be granted, people with this sort of mindset would quickly be in the doldrums even on “Pandora” and would be seeking the next “thing to be”.

It is a mental “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” syndrome.

Now, I am going to say something controversial to some – too bad, this is my blog: The deep longing in the heart for a place of peace. love, and endless adventure comes from the GSV.

GSV stands for: God Shaped Vacuum.

Those people don’t know it, but they are longing for God who in fact can take you to Pandora – and is the only way you can get there (by his Son, Jesus Christ). If you want to know more about this, send me an email at : dave[@]celticcrosseng.com (I reformatted that so that email scrapers cannot get to it).

The other issue is not recognizing reality for what it is. Reality is a hard teacher – it does not give any cares for fools – and wishing you lived in an idyllic floating island Paradise will not make it so. Much better to be successful in life and explore the infinite things our creator has made for us in this world, and always to anticipate the next.

But lets get to the next only after we have squeezed every last drop out of our lives here and now!

David T. McKee

I am trying something out on one of my other blogs – www.mckeecopywriting.com

Basically I am posting a story, a “Science Fiction Fantasy”, that will have a new chapter every few days or so. The idea is to advertise items that may interest you around the story to see how clicking and purchasing decisions are effected by a good story.

I believe that stories affect many things on our live – from what and how we buy, to how we live, and ultimately the legacy we leave behind. This was the view of the Celtic Storytellers “Seannachaidh” or Bards as we know them today. This was the method Jesus used when telling His Parables.

I believe it is the method we need to use to motivate ourselves to ever greater levels of success and fulfillment – and ultimately is how we decide if and when we will achieve greatness.

So read a story – or go write one!

David T. McKee

Venture Capital for your First Business

From my new Online Series O-Biz 101. This is part 2

Inspiration:

To get inspired to create your very first internet business, you need to make some money right up front, and you need to be able to do it for twenty dollars or less.

Why twenty dollars? Becuase it is a nice figure you can hold in your mind – when I say “Twenty Dollars” probably the first thin you thought of was a crisp green twenty dollar bill (if you are from America) or, now-a-days, it is a greenish peach color… whatever, the fact is you should be able to see your very first net based profits without spending any more than this – and by net based profit, I mean to imply that you make you twenty dollars back and then some.

So, here are my three top business opportunities you can start for twenty dollars or less that can earn you your first internet profits:

1. Sell a product or service on Ebay – each product will cost you anywhere from about 1 to 5 bucks depending on how fancy you get with gallery images, etc.
2. Get a free account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.org, set up a free blog, then join Click-Bank as an affiliate publisher for free and start promoting some affiliate products. This can cost you noting but some time to set up the sites and get your products. There have been some people who have literally made thousands of dollars doing just this – but their secret was awesome copy and content. That is where you will be spending your time in this approach.
3. Join the Warrior forum or the DataPoint forum and promote a product of your own. There is a twenty dollar cost to do this and you have to have a minimum number of days and posts on the forums, but they are a massive wealth of information on internet marketing – many individuals have made thousands using this approach, including yours truly.

These are just three ways off the top of my head that cost twenty or less.  There are probably hundreds more, and if you are willing to purchase a domain name (which usually only costs ten bucks or so) and learn how to use Wordpress stand alone version, you can also create your very own blog without the restrictions of the free blogs. In fact, this blog uses Wordpress and forum software – you could even start your own member site and charge a membership dues.

Inspiration is the title of this second installment of the O-Biz 101 series, and you should be inspired to realize that for your first business there is enough free stuff out there that you can get started right now on you own business.

Stay Thirsty my Friends!

-DTM

Should I buy the micro-brewed Brouwerij Van Steenberge? Or the Primátor Maibock. I can’t take it! I guess I’ll just buy the Budweiser…

Options. Most people and most marketers mistakenly think more is better, but recent studies and some published books have shown that it can be a demotivator at a certain point, actually causing real sales to plummet.

Too Many Choices - In Jelly or Beer

Columbia professor Sheena Iyengar has been studying choice.  For her research paper, “When Choice is Demotivating”:

They set up a free tasting booth in a grocery store, with six different jams.  40% of the customers stopped to taste.  30% of those bought some.  A week later, they set up the same booth in the same store, but this time with twenty-four different jams.  60% of the customers stopped to taste.  But only 3% bought some!

What does this mean for Success in our marketing efforts, in deciding between tasks we want to accomplish? In deciding in goals we want to achieve?

It means we can be paralyzed by choice. The human mind is capable, on average, to hold up to seven things at once. We can only truly focus on one thing, but we can keep track of about seven max (for the best of us). Probably between 4 and 6 is more realistic for most of us. What this means is that when we are face with choices that are very much greater than this, we face a dilemma where we are not sure what the best choice is because we cannot analyze all of the choice data, so we get internally frustrated and ultimately make no choice.

This is statistically significant – in fact if we know exactly what we want, or have a pretty good idea, we can eliminate most of the multitude of choices and focus down to the few we really need to look at. This accounts for the three percent who actually bought jelly in the example. So what occurs when we have even a partial focus is we are able to “recreate” the situation with fewer choices. But when we are completely unfocused on what choice we want, and when we are faced with too many options, we don’t make a choice. This is a general principle that needs to be applied to our marketing efforts.

How many times have you seen a website where there were a dizzying array of possible options, links, videos, audios, banners, pictures,etc. and you simply did not know what to do. Perhaps you felt like you wanted to click something, but you had that frustration that whatever you clicked on would take you away from a possible better choice that led somewhere else…

How many times do you think sales have been lost at websites like that because of the issue of over-complexity and too many options? Probably more than most think, because most people assume that more options is better.

The solution to this dilemma is to find ways of presenting large quantities of choices in a simplified fashion. Splitting the choices using hierarchical trees, breaking data into related chunks, pulling together links into blocks that hide the details so that focus is regained. This is an essential tool in designing a website with many choices.

An excellent example of this is Google – a plain white field with a single logo in the center, a box to enter search terms, and two buttons. That is all. How is that for simplicity? And this engine can bring you the complexity of the entire web. This is the kind of forethought that needs to go into any sales page or product display, etc. It’s nice to have many options, but if you don’t present those options in a way that is digestible to human brains, you could lose most of your sales.

This principle holds in most things, not just selling jelly (or beer) – but in the presentation of data in a slide show for your office, or in presenting a scientific paper – anything that presents objects to be considered in some way.

One option too many can make life just as colorless as one too few. In business, this is an important principle to understand.

-DTM