Marketing performance: BloodhoundBlog is the last place crybabies should go when they need to have their boo-boos kissed, and, therefore, it is the last place to go looking for crybabies
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Saturday, April 19th, 2008, 8:25 am MST
Category: Blogging,Disintermediation,Egoism in Action,Marketing,Real Estate
I want to talk about the idea of marketing performance as a disruptive strategy — but not quite yet. I’m using the term as a gerundive: Developing tools and techniques that by far eclipse your competition, then promoting that outsized commitment to excellence in your marketing. Not: “I’m the best.” Not even: “Here’s why I’m the best.” Simply this: “Here is everything you’ll get that you can’t obtain anywhere else.” This is the means by which we can flush most of the bums from the business even as we supplant the sclerotic dinosaurs who claim to be our leaders.
As a matter of general notice, it were well to take account of a couple of salient facts:
- This is not an alien message to the BloodhoundBlog audience. The people who come here are already committed to doing the best job they can do as Realtors, lenders, investors. We appeal to the elite of real estate professionals, and, not coincidentally, we tend to repel the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators.
- In consequence, beating up on the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators is probably a pretty poor strategy here. Most readers here would not just agree with but would joyously amend denunciations of specific bad behavior. But generalized complaints about unspecified groups of miscreants may have the opposite effect: The uncontested best of a group of people rising to the defense of the uncontested worst.
That’s as may be. There are no groups of people, there are only individuals. Defending a group is no less irrational than attacking that group, but I have no use and no time for irrationality in any flavor.
I’m interested in individual practitioners becoming so much better at the performance of their jobs, and so much better at marketing that performance, that they put themselves beyond competition. I want to put the bums in another line of work, and I want to put the dinosaurs in a museum, where they belong. To my ears, everything else is pointless noise.
I’ll deal with this all in detail, but not now: It’s Saturday, Realtor day, and I gotta go to work. Here are a couple of clips from crybabyworld, just to highlight how useless and pitiable that strategy is.
From this week’s episode of South Park:
And from James McMurtry, the ultimate crybaby anthem:
Are you looking for an antidote to that? If so, you might be looking 180 degrees in the wrong direction, but here’s something gorgeous to clear your mind:
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20 Comments so far
Gosh, you posted my favorite song in the whole wide world. Therefore, I agree with everything you’ve said.
Greg,
“This is the means by which we can flush most of the bums from the business even as we supplant the sclerotic dinosaurs who claim to be our leaders.”
Awesome! Couldn’t have put it any better. And this is why I’m counting the days to Unchained.
> Gosh, you posted my favorite song in the whole wide world.
Fiona’s a great show, more than worth the price in money an time. There are clips of her playing last Summer with Nickel Creek, and I’m hoping that will turn into a DVD.
Yes, she is. Most of the time. I want to see her tour with regina spektor, who was so frenetic and captivating when i saw her.
“I’m interested in individual practitioners becoming so much better at the performance of their jobs, and so much better at marketing that performance, that they put themselves beyond competition. I want to put the bums in another line of work, and I want to put the dinosaurs in a museum, where they belong. To my ears, everything else is pointless noise.”
AWESOME!!!! You’ve just gotten me even MORE excited about Unchained! Can’t wait!
Never thought of myself as a crybaby but McMurtry’s song cuts deeply and I’m weeping, which clearly means I’m not a machine.
Ruminating…
> Ruminating…
It’s good art about bad philosophy, the secret to Socialism’s success since long before Marx. The best of the breed is Les Miserables. Hugo openly acknowledges that his “miserable ones” are vile, detestable people, and still he expects you to feel sorry for them.
In the case of McMurtry’s song, he’s writing about people who bet on evil again and again — labor unions, redistributive taxation, protective tariffs, compulsory education, etc. — and are dismayed to discover that crime doesn’t pay.
It’s the particularity, the granularity of detail, that makes it work as art — and makes you weep. But the fact is that the tax-payers spent $100,000 a head to educate those people, and each one of them steadfastly did nothing to improve his or her own mind. Overall, Americans are much better off than they were when you were born. But the “miserable ones” are where they are, for the most part, because that’s where they aimed themselves.
Yeah, but…
Teri,
Ruminate, but GOI. It’s best to move onward with a smile on your face. There’s evil in the world, and pain all over. Recognize it, help to thwart it, but don’t stumble or get dragged down into it.
GOI? Get over it.
.
> Yeah, but…
I was on the phone with my Mom on Friday. She had to regale me with all the latest completely predictable local disasters. McMurtry’s song could have been set in Danville, IL, where I grew up, except that the local industry was auto parts rather than textiles. By now it’s slowly dying. Not as bad as Youngstown, OH, but the same kind of blight. They bet on slavery — of employers — and never for a minute imagined that the slaves might run off on them. Most of the kids I grew up with never learned a damned thing, and now they tell themselves they have no options.
When I say, “It’s raining soup,” I’m not talking about the internet, I’m talking about everything. The world is awash in incredible abundance. Allowing for extreme physical or mental infirmities, poverty is a habit of mind.
>Ruminate, but GOI.
I’ll see you in Phx!
>The world is awash in incredible abundance.
Yes…Yes it is…
>>>The world is awash in incredible abundance. Allowing for extreme physical or mental infirmities, poverty is a habit of mind.
Man, Greg, You Just made my first BHB post irrelevant in two sentences.
While I don’t agree with McMurtry – I think he did a good job on the song.
But you called it perfectly as the Crybaby’s Anthem.
> While I don’t agree with McMurtry – I think he did a good job on the song.
To give the devil his due — and he is a pretty consistent advocate for hellish attitudes — James McMurtry is a fine song-writer. Saint Mary of the Woods is excellent. The Lights of Cheyenne is a pocket encyclopedia of bad marriages. Leveland is fascinating and horrifying at the same time. And Choctaw Bingo is the world’s most complete catalog of White Trash archetypes.
> Man, Greg, You Just made my first BHB post irrelevant in two sentences.
Naw, I made it better, you’ll see. Everybody working here ends up working harder, better, smarter — more compelling as art, more rigorous as philosophy, more bullet-proof as rhetoric. That’s the way the world works, when it’s working properly.
Oh, believe me, I know. That’s why I’m here.
I’m allowed to be either ugly or boring, but not both. Will post Tuesday.
That Mc Murtry song is perhaps the most offensive trash I’ve heard. He exploits disabled veterans and mocks the talent of an all-volunteer fighting force.
If I sound sensitive it’s because I shook the LEFT hand of one of those men, last night. He willingly chose to serve our country rather than make a pile of money, suffered a disfiguring injury doing it, and intends to thrive in civilian life, regardless of his circumstance. I was awed and inspired when I listened to this young man’s plans. His injury, a horrible reminder of the ravages of war, was eclipsed by his noble spirit.
What the McMurtry’s don’t know (and BHB readers do know) is that the human spirit is a beautiful and powerful force. We have free will. We can choose good over evil, right over wrong, productivity over sloth, and happiness over despair. For good, right, productivity, and happiness are not conditions, they are a state of mind
That state of mind, that gift, is free- yours for the taking, regardless of your past failure. You can choose that state of mind, today…now…this minute. Simply decide NOW that Mc Murtry does NOT represent your condition and let him commiserate with the broken of spirit.
“But the “miserable ones” are where they are, for the most part, because that’s where they aimed themselves”
That may be the most succinct summary of “attitude” that I’ve ever read.
Good stuff.
> Good stuff.
Bless you, sir. Thank you. Nice to see you here. Make yourself at home.
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