The cocaine of marketing

Imagine going to the doctor with no real ailments. But wanting to feel better, you ask for a prescription of cocaine.

Cocaine may solve a short term need but it has long term negative effects. Cocaine is not the answer. Proper diet and exercise is.

Discounting works the same way. It's never the real answer.

Yet, discounting is so appealing. It works so wonderfully well.
Put something on sale and customers buy it.
Sales spike.

Business is thriving...or so it seems.

Discounting is exactly like cocaine. It is less effective each and every time you snort it. The initial high is never as good as that first time. Eventually, customers don't even buy unless there's a discount.

Business erodes.
Profits sink.
Sickness prevails.

The retail industry has become heavily addicted to discounting.

In the battlefield of retail, businesses look for reasonable excuses to put another sale on the window. The traditional reasons to buy for Valentines Day, Easter, Summer break, Back to School, and Christmas are too far apart. Retail needs other reasons to keep customers coming within the two months of each occasion.

Those reasons feed the addiction. The addiction to looking for a sale.

Retail started advertising "Black Friday" deals about four years ago in Canada.

It doesn't make sense to me. Black Friday doesn't mean anything to Canadians. Traditionally, Black Friday is the unofficial start to the Christmas shopping season in the United States. It follows American Thanksgiving, as the last Friday of November.

Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. Black Friday is just another Friday. The unofficial start of Christmas shopping in Canada has long been immediately following Remembrance Day.

In an industry where it seems like everyone is addicted to the same drug, it has become the norm for consumers to look for the deal.

And look we will.

Until someone gives us a better deal.

When consumers look for deals, there is no loyalty to brands, products or businesses. The sale becomes transactional.

No wonder retail stores close so frequently.
Their competitive advantage is based on price.
And price is always the easiest and fastest thing to copy.

In the words of Roy Williams, "Most retailers are twitchy little weasels".

My advice to retailers:
Don't be a twitchy little weasel.
Don't be lured in by the powder.
It won't make you feel better long term.
It will kill you.

Come up with a better competitive advantage.
And watch you're coke laced neighbours die off over time.

Birch tree in the night

Oh great tree in the night, you look like a man.
You sit there empty all day, until nightfall you stand.
I ignore you.
But you are alive.
And you salute to me as if you respect me.
Respect goes both ways and I have none for you.
I don't notice you.
You are a tree.

You must be lonely
Until the gentle cricket creaks your name.
In the glowing eyes of dusk,
You wake up.
The forest jumps with discussions of the daily events.

Oh great giant, you are free,
Chained to your roots.
But that's what you are, fore you are a tree.

You will never move from that place,
But that's what you do.
Stand and wait.
Until death.

Because you are a tree.
A great soldier of the forest.
Standing on guard to protect all other living things
Against me and the rest.

Trust your feelings

There's a feeling deep inside of me that won't go away.

It hurts. It excites. It cries to come up.

I can't explain it.
I don't know why it's there.

The feeling or urge is a desire to do something great.

I thought it was because I didn't have any biological children. Maybe it was my opportunity to leave a mark on the world.

It's like Obi Wan Kenobi is saying to me, "Rick, trust your feelings".

I've always had this feeling. When I was six years old, I expressed them to my grandma.

At 16, I said similar things to my uncle Danny.

When I was 23, I was in a dead end job, going nowhere. I thought my feelings had lied to me. In my mini depression, I told my future wife I was never going to do anything great. She corrected me and reinforced that I was destined for amazing things.

I fell in love with her that day.

Since then the feelings won't go away. They scream at me sometimes. They pet me even when I sleep.

Is it confidence dancing around and making fun of me?
Is it ego singing "Eye of the Tiger" at top of its lungs?
Is it spirits sharing their secrets with me?
Is it my soul telling me the reason for my birth?
Is it wishful thinking?

Or am I just plain crazy?

I don't think I'm alone.

I read the founder of Nike's (Phil Knight) autobiography, "Shoe Dog".  He had similar feelings. He explained them so well, that I started reading it again.

These feelings are inexplainable.
I feel the most alive when I work with them.
I am dead when I don't.

It's not about money or fame.
It's something else.

Maybe it's "The Force".

Whether it is strong in me or not, it freaks me out sometimes.

No trespassing

When I see a sign that reads, "No Trespassing", I am hesitant to continue. The sign is clear. In my head, it implies that I will be shot on sight if I pass that imaginary tree line acting like a fortress wall.

Respectful of the sign's demands, I turn and walk the other way.

Something cool happened to me recently. I was in another country. My internal clock said 6 am even though it was only 4 am locally. Not able to sleep, I went for a walk.

There was a gravel trail that led from my room towards a mountaintop. I wanted to see sunrise from the mountaintop. I had seen others enter this trail, so I knew it was fairly safe.  I strolled along for about five minutes when the path split. One path was still gravelled but much narrower. The other was only dirt. The safe choice was the gravelled path.

Searching for adventure, I took the road less travelled. The air was clean. I could smell the sunshine peaking through the horizon.

Ten minutes on my new path, I saw the back of a diamond shaped sign. Wondering what the sign said, I anxiously skipped to reveal my horror.

It read, "No Trespassing".

Was I a trespasser?
Did I miss another sign and mistakingly end up on someone else's property?
Was someone going to shoot me?
Once I passed the sign, should I be allowed to return from where I came?

The fear I had was inexplicable. I had broken one of my rules. Respect the wishes of others.

I was now a trespasser. As I retraced my steps to my room, I rehearsed several answers in case I met up with the Marlboro man and his shotgun.

"I don't want no trouble sir, I got lost"
"I must've missed the "No Trespassing sign", I'll be on my way"
"I didn't see anything. I'm just a bit lost"

I rushed back to my room. With my heart full of adrenaline, I wondered why that rogue sign existed. I asked the owner of the property about the sign. He told me not to worry about it.

The sign said, "No trespassing".  Was this sign to protect us from outsiders coming into our encampment?

Nope. Strangers walk those trails every day. We want people to enjoy the beauty of our complex.

Why is there a "No trespassing" sign?
I don't know. It must have been put there from the previous owners. Did you get to see the sunrise?

No, I was too afraid of being shot, so I scurried back to my room.

What I learned from this experience is there are rules I don't want to break. Yet in order to witness the beautiful sunrise, I had to ignore the "No Trespassing" sign.

I lost out on an amazing experience because of a stupid, inconsequential rule.

What stupid, inconsequential rules are holding you back from experiencing a better life?

Regurgitated learning

There are countless examples of phrases that are engrained into our rule-making world.

We sheepingly follow them like commandments even though they weren't on the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.

When it comes to rules. There is one constant. There are no rules. Or as Lexus pointed out in a recent commercial, "rules weren't made for the exceptional, they were written by them".

I sit in a lot of business meetings where highly intelligent people regurgitate the same rules they read in a book or learned in a classroom.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel.
If you conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.
Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.
It's not about the product you sell. It's about the experience you offer.

On their own, all of those sentences make sense. But so what. What is the real learning behind each of them.

Can I learn from them?
Can I expand on them?
Can I break them?

Rules are accepted until someone breaks them and makes our lives better. We then all realize the rule wasn't true.

Cars couldn't be built in 73 minutes, until Ford figured it out.
Men couldn't fly until the Wright Brothers showed us otherwise.
Cars can't fly until someone figures out that George Jetson wasn't just a cartoon.

Automated learning can be done by robots and computers. We've been taught to read something, learn about it and then regurgitate it as knowledge. We don't need knowledge. That's why we have Google.

We have to be greater than Google.

We have to ask the hard questions. We have to get deeper in our understanding. We have to come up with new innovations. Google doesn't come up with innovations. The people behind Google do.

Here's my point.

The next time you are faced with an automatic response, ask yourself one question, "Do I know this statement to be true OR am I regurgitating something I was told.

A hate letter

I wake up every morning and look at you. Not knowing what role you play in my life, I wonder why you're still here?

I think you're lying to me.

Or do you tell me things I don't want to hear?
Words roll around my head, "Isn't that the definition of a friend?"

Without emotion, you just say it the way you see it. Actually it's so matter of fact that it pisses me off.

I've asked you to sugar coat your message.
You never do.

I've ignored you. And you were waiting for me when I was ready to come back.
I've yelled and swore at you. You always listened calmly and non judgemental.

I hate you.  You've been in my life for 20 years. I think I hated you the first day I saw you.

Why did I stick around so long?
Was it hate masked as love?
Or was it necessity?
Who knows?

All I know is I've had enough. You stopped talking to me. You stopped listening.

It's been two chilly weeks. I cannot stand this coldness anymore. Today is the day I'm kicking you to the curb. You are garbage to me.

I'm getting a younger, sexier model.

Can't wait to bring her home and show the kids.

I hope the new set of bathroom scales won't be a bitch like you were.

No fault insurance

We are living in the age of no-fault society.

The insurance companies taught us that there are times when no one is actually at fault for an accident. But we know that's not true. It's always someone else's fault. It couldn't be us. Could it?

Everything happens to us.. It has to be someone else's fault. As we look at where to point our blame, we are forgetting to take responsibility for our own actions.

Our society is walking backwards. Evolution and technology haven't given us eyes in the back of heads yet. We have to fall down eventually. And when we do, it's gonna hurt the entire race.

Lack of responsibility is a lack of competence. We are not born with this competence. We are taught it by our parents and teachers.

Depending on our experiences, each of us have a different level of emotional competence to accept responsibility.

Hot coffee burns.
Do we have to be told to be careful?
We do if we don't have the emotional competence to accept the results of our actions.

It's easier to blame another person, an event, or a thing for the resulting damage to ourselves.

In every great story, there is are three prominent characters: The villain, the hero and the victim.

We never play the role of villain in our own stories. We accept the role of hero or victim.

The victim says "Oh my, look what the villain has done to me."
The hero says, "I will right this wrong and save the day."
The villain says with conviction, "I didn't do anything wrong."

No one is right. No one is wrong.

The villain in your story believes you are the villain. The villain actually believes you are the one who wronged him.

So who's right?

It doesn't matter. You can be right or you can be happy. That's the only choice.

We have to accept the shit that happens to us and try to understand what we could've done differently.

We're the only ones to blame.

It's time we all take responsibility like a Boss. Otherwise, our species is going to wake up one day in a dimly lit cave wondering why the gods hate us so much.

That's the path we're on.
Don't blame me.
It's not my fault.