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A look back at the defensive dominance of Dikembe Mutombo and how he used the finger wag to intimidate his opponents to think twice before attacking the rim.
Transcription
Dikembe Mutombo and the power of the finger.
Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.
I just do this, I left these books sideways, this is going to drive so many of those OCD people nuts. So I’m going to put them up for you real quick. You can imagine all the empty books on the other side, so they’ll drag an appraiser and there they go. They’re just jumping off the shelf.
I want to tell you a quick story about the Dikembe Mutombo. One of those situations that I haven’t thought about in years…and there they go, they’re just coming out, the whole bookshelf is gonna come out in a second here is perfect.
So we were I was having a conversation with my friend Brad. And he brought this up, he said, you want to do a video about that?
I haven’t thought about that in years and I went back and looked at it. And I thought about the geniuses of the situation. So here’s this guy from Congo, gets into the league in the early 90s. The 1990s gets into the NBA, okay, his job is to block and he concerns himself, he is going to be one of the greatest blockers of all time, he is going to block and keep the other team from scoring.
This is for those of you who aren’t absolute raving basketball fans, those of you who are going to think this sounds childish the way I’m describing it, but I got to play to the whole crowd here.
So his whole thing is, is to play this up and as he’s going about doing this, he comes up with this thing where people try to score on him, he blocks him. And then he goes, No, no, no like this. And it becomes this huge thing. It becomes this taunt, the simplest thing in the world.
It isn’t anything major, except that it drives people bonkers. It’s a simple little taunt when he’s done his job. He’s kind of tossing it back on them. He wasn’t hurting anybody.
But it drove the league insane, they started fining him for it and trying to get it outlawed throughout the entire league. The commissioner of the NBA kept calling him up and saying please don’t do this anymore.
And he was getting so much attention from it. It’s the one thing he’s known for the most that he’s a Hall of Famer. But this is this one little move with his finger is the thing that any interview you see they bring it up everything.
It’s been copied not only throughout the NBA.
Okay, so we played until I think in 2009 he it was copied not only throughout the NBA, it’s been copied throughout all sorts of people doing this.
And using it as a simple little top taunt and going No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s so hilarious that something so simple can drive people so crazy. So how does this tie into business?
How does this tie into everything that we normally talk about? Well, if you look at our last handful of videos, the last two days, we were talking about the Hegelian dialectic, okay.
And how when you do something to get a reaction, then what ends up is something in your favor, no matter what, as long as there is an emotional reaction and there was clearly he absolutely drove people bonkers by moving his finger back and forth.
Just something that simple.
That it’s not even what we’d call trash talking like we talked about yesterday. He didn’t have to say anything. He would oftentimes do No, no, no with his mouth, but he didn’t have to make any noise and he drove them insane.
A simple thing, that simple thing causing a reaction. So no matter what came after, it was worth it to him to do because it got him more attention.
It drove the other side crazier, and so they had a tougher time scoring against them. Because of such a simple psychological ploy. It’s no different than kids on the playground. But the same psychology is present in all humans.
If people can’t control their emotions if they allow themselves to get carried away with a simple little taunt. Then the taunter wins every time. It’s an amazing display and it also shows you how even just being a little playful can drive your enemies absolutely bonkers and it’s not a bad thing.
Especially if you’re goal isn’t just to drive them crazy if you’re just having a good time and having a fun time.
Clearly, he was and to this day still does and still enjoys the attention that he’s gotten from a simple little finger wag, brilliant stuff, if you can find a way to, to include some of these things into your marketing into your persona, into what you put out there.
You will, yes, you may hurt some people’s feelings, you may cause some people to not like you because of it. But in that process, you will also attract a whole lot of people that see that you don’t care that you’re having a good time and so that was a great suggestion.
It was actually from this one little idea of the finger wag that I based this entire last few series of videos. So hopefully you enjoyed if you’d like some strategies that you can use throughout your business from here into eternity.
Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com you have a great night. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.