I just read an article from a great business coach and friend, John Falchetto. It related business to sports, and the importance of keeping your eye on the prize, rather than just the challenges that come between you and your goals.
His article got me to thinking about how people’s perceptions of winning are drastically different. John’s article, “How to Get Past Challenges”, included a video of Lance Armstrong racing in Tour de France 2003. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you have probably heard of Lance Armstrong. He won Tour de France seven consecutive times, even after surviving testicular cancer. That is a huge accomplishment, and he obviously knows how to win.
In the video, a competitor, Joseba Beloki, crashed right in front of Lance. Without hesitation, Lance found a way around the complication to achieve the win. Winning is what he does. He sees beyond obstacles of nearly any magnitude, and does not let them get in his way. Here is the video, so you can see it for yourself.
Armstrong swerved around the downed rider to continue in the race. He was focused on winning, and he surely had a picture in his mind of crossing the finish line with another victory.
Here’s the deal: In order to win in a competitive environment, it takes focus, and drive. You have to see it, feel it, and really want it to make it happen. In fact, you have to see it, feel it, and want it enough to overcome obstacles.
Sometimes the toughest obstacles come in the form of people who will hate you for winning. Whether it is a competitor, or just another cynic, some people really will hate you for winning … if you do it enough. Lance Armstrong has certainly taken a whole lot of criticism for winning, including relentless accusations of using performance-enhancing drugs.
The Psychology of Winning
The psychology of winning has been the topic of about a squillion books, and other studies. It should be little surprise that only a small number of them were actually created or inspired by “losers”. Oh, they have surely lost many times, but their perseverance continues to drive them to win. Some people hate them for that … I mean really despise them. Success polarizes an audience, and as much as it may be wrong, it brings people together, and it separates people. You just can’t make everybody happy … so stop trying! The ones who do appreciate your goals and your efforts will appreciate you even more.
When it comes to social media, that cynicism has very fertile soil. In fact, I wrote about the power of cynicism in a still-relevant 2009 piece titled “Self-Promotion: The Ugliest Term Ever!” This article was taken from one of my books, and it addressed the hypersensitivity of people when it comes to a marketing message. Some people will really hate it, and some people will understand that marketing is what helps companies progress toward better things. After all, without marketing, how many of the great products in your home or business would you own today? For that matter, without marketing, nobody would ever go on a date, get married, or carry on the species. We must market our goods and services in order to succeed, or even survive. That means showing what we have to offer, and delivering it to the right people, just to get anything in life, from a job to a mate.
Winning is a very tricky thing, and our individual psychology surrounding success is one of the biggest obstacles. I could write a whole book on the psychology of winning. Come to think of it … I already did! It was titled “Living in the Storm“, and I put a whole lot of experience into that book. I have won … a lot, both as a highly trained race car driver, and as a 15 year old school dropout who retired at 25, screwed that up, and came back to create a very successful corporation. It took a lot of losing, and a lot of scrutiny from people who hated me for those things.
Look at that … I just promoted two of my books in under a minute. Doesn’t that just piss you off?
Overcome The Cynics … They Aren’t Buying Your Lunch!
In a real-life instance of trying to please everybody, versus doing what is good for my readership and for myself, I’ll give you just a brief and recent example of cynicism. Remember, the cynics are not the ones we care about in marketing … the ones buying lunch, or the ones who know the ones who are buying lunch are what we care about here! The others will run you down, and they are obstacles. They often hold you back from doing the things which are best for your business, and they are clearly not there to feed your kids.
Perhaps you saw my snazzy new popup on the way here. In case you missed it, the popup looks like the image below. If you have a weak stomach, you may want to cover your eyes and scroll past this. It is pretty offensive!
A screenshot of this recent addition to my blog showed up in a Google+ post by my friend, Jeff Gibbard. His initial comment was “Nice new pop-up. Been thinking about doing something similar to increase subscriber count. Is that a WordPress plugin?” He was curious about using it on his blog, Social Media Philanthropy.
The next comment on the post was from Paul Mosenson, and it said “That is cool. I;d like to learn how he did that as well”. Paul’s comment inspired me to write a tutorial on it … one of these days (if you like it, be sure to subscribe, and I’ll show you how to do it). It is not a plugin, and since I am a programmer, I found it pretty easy. Surely I can help to make it easy for others, too.
Another comment was overwhelmingly negative, as if I had claimed to be a fan of Adolph Hitler, son of Sadam Hussein, and dear friend to Osama bin Laden … and then told him he had ugly kids and a slutty wife. I expected that mentality from some people. After all, it may actually serve my interests, and that would be … well, it would be … HORRIBLE! Yeah, getting something for my work … like somebody new to connect and network with, or a prospective client, or somebody who liked my work enough to pass it along to somebody who needs marketing help … that would probably kill teddy bears and make unicorns cry.
The point is that the people who made it beyond the horrendous insult of the popup are the people I care about. It takes under a tenth of a second to click any blank part of the page to make the popup go away (for a week), and it has boosted my subscriber rate at a significant level. Has it made people click away? It doesn’t look that way so far. Will it drive away the people I care about, or the ones who are actually buying my lunch? Heck no, they want to be here, and they appreciate the reminder to keep coming back, because I have something useful and interesting to say. They have interests in our mutual success, and they care that I keep doing what I do to help them, just as I care to keep helping.
In the end, there is a big difference between good business-building and the ugly mistakes that I wrote about a couple days ago in “5 Spam Tactics Good People Use to Kill Business Efforts“.
The difference is quality, but if you let people hate and intimidate you away from doing what your business needs in order to grow, they will be eating a lot better than you.
Do what you need to do, and do it with quality. Leave the “pleasing everybody” to the competitors who are willing to destroy their return on investment by pandering to people who really don’t give a damn about them anyway. You want the ones buying your lunch, and I do to.
If you see your life’s work the way the cynical people do, you are wise to sleep in a coat of armor and wake up ready for a fight. On the other hand, if you embrace the joy of a happy waiter, and do your very best job to serve the people who matter, your success will be measurably greater than the hateful others hoping to dictate your future.
If you didn’t hate this, and if you have an eensy bit of respect for the thoughts I shared here, tweet, Facebook, email, and Google+ this to those people for me, will you please?
If you did hate it, please add your comments to express your dislike.
Photo Credit:
Lance Armstrong by Angus Kingston via Flickr
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