Back when we offered a money-back guarantee on our Marketing Toolkit, I received a lot of strange reasons for people wanting a refund. Ninety percent of the requests came in December, when people were scraping together whatever funds they could find for holiday gifts (and often said so).
But one of the funniest requests I ever received was from a dude running a small IT business doing less than $200,000 who requested the refund within an hour of enrolling. He wrote: “Greetings, I would like to get a refund and cancel my membership. I was expecting an easy, simple, step-by-step plan. The program is too much work! No need to mail out the kit. Please refund.”
He opened the gym door to see people working to get in shape and said, “Nope.”
I suppose he thought he’d get a lounge chair and a margarita while someone just brought him great clients for $297. Funnier: During his sales consultation he asked if sending homemade cookies with a follow-up phone call would be a good way to generate leads, so I suppose he opted to hire the Keebler Elves for his marketing team instead of doing what we recommended. It’s South Park’s Underwear Gnome Profit Plan: Step 1: Make cookies. Step 2: ? Step 3: Profit. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t hesitate to gobble down some homemade food delivered by a total stranger, so I say go for it. When he calls to follow up, he should say the cookies were free, but the antidote to the poison isn’t.
I know, I know, I’m being “mean” again. Tough. Holidays are over and it’s time to get back to WORK. Candidly, I see more and more of this intellectual laziness by the day. In an interview with Tim Grover, one of the NBA’s most revered trainers to Hall of Famers such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, he commented that one of the biggest problems with all the information at our fingertips today is that people have lost the willingness to figure things out.
As someone in the “information marketing” business for over two decades, I’ve watched the steady decline of attention spans and people’s willingness to LEARN how to do something, replaced with people just wanting someone to DO IT FOR THEM. Complete abdication.
AI is obviously making this a lot worse as more people prefer to ask ChatGPT what to do versus putting in the time and effort to gather resource materials, books, and courses to learn something, understand it, and then put that knowledge to use.
As a marketer, you can make a lot of money jumping on the lazy-train trend with convenience-based products. Are your carpets so filthy they stink? Don’t get them shampooed by a professional—just spray Febreze on them to cover up the smell. Hate cleaning? Start Swiffering! These aren’t bad, of course, but that’s not the point—they are shortcuts. And if you look at the successful products and services of our time, they all have the “easy-button” theme running through them, from Amazon to Uber. As a marketer, you should keep that in mind. But as an entrepreneur with honest ambition, you need to stand guard at the door of your mind for any and all easy-button porn, especially anything that takes away the responsibility of thinking.
A Producers Club peer group member recently told me she hasn’t used her “9-1-1” call with me yet because every time she finds herself with a problem or idea she wants to run by me, she thinks it through first, not wanting to sound like a dummy on the phone with me or waste the opportunity. In doing so, she ends up figuring out the answer herself, hence not needing the call. Smart.
The “give me a simple step-by-step” crowd never—and I do mean NEVER—gets rich. Never succeeds in marketing. Never excels in managing people. Never experiences big breakthroughs. They also never develop the mental and emotional strength to push through tough times, instead forever retreating back to a simpler, safer zone.
So, this year I’d like to propose a NEW resolution: Embrace difficult, complex situations and think them through. Don’t back away from chaos and overwhelm, and don’t resent it or even complain about it—seek it out as a means for expanding your capacity and improving your skills. Welcome challenges instead of avoiding them. Your ability and willingness to embrace complexity is in direct correlation to your bank account.
Jack Welch didn’t grow GE by 4,000% by reading Marketing For Dummies. Marc Randolph didn’t start Netflix by following The 4-Hour Work Week. Jocko Willink didn’t succeed in leading his troops through insanely difficult and dangerous missions in Iraq by reading The One Minute Manager.
Want to really win at business? Embrace chaos and complexity.
