Tag: Human Behavior

Old Will Always Become New 👴👶

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Thoughts on trends and human behavior.

Transcription

Old will always become new.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I wanted to talk about this concept that I’ve seen most often in dealing with business. Because I’m a Business investor, I deal with a lot of different types of businesses, I study a lot more than even the ones I deal with and you see patterns.

And these are patterns of human nature.

We get certain concepts of something that’s new, that’s fresh, that’s different, that’s odd, that’s weird. And it never stays the same.

That odd weird thing, you start seeing more and more and more until it becomes normal.

Then the thing that was normal then becomes odd and weird. Everything old becomes new, and everything new becomes old. And it just this constant cycle.

This is true, very, very much in business. And anyone that’s been involved with Ionic Yes, I would say 5 to 10 years doing any type of marketing for business. You’ll see this trend over and over and seems to even be speeding up I think with technology.

It’s allowed a lot of these societal issues that have always existed to be able to speed up. But this this comic strip, this is from the rubes comic strip. Lee Rubin

Rubin. I think you can find it at rubes cartoons.com I believe that’s right.

He was I don’t own this comic strip or have rights to it. I saw it in social media, so I figured I’d show it to you.

So for those of you listening, it says the amazing untattooed ban, and this guy posing with his skin with zero tattoos on them.

It posing in a way that was very similar to the sideshow circus act because at one time, a person that had an enormous amount of tattoos was odd was weird, was different, was avant garde.

It was it was a freak, a sideshow freak would only do that.

Through the years and really honestly, within the past 15 years, I would say, tattoos have become more and more popular to wear a person that is fully tattooed.

Just about nearly all their body covered in tattoos is commonplace nowadays.

And it’s less common to see someone with zero tattoos.

Now, that’s not making a judgment call one way or the other about tattoos. The point is, is something that was odd and really nonconformist has become the conformist and the nonconformist is a person that doesn’t get a tattoo.

You see these things, and this always happens, this happens in everything. This happens up in your talking media’s of marketing.

So at one time, there, you had piles of junk mail, in your mailbox, I’d say 20 years ago, I pull out some pile out of my mailbox on a daily basis, a huge pile of stuff.

So much so that you it was, it wasn’t that effective, there was ways to be effective. But it was tougher back then, because there was so much competition.

Obviously, some of it must have been effective. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been spending money on it. But it just seemed like such a waste, such a waste and paper and everything else.

Most people were sick of junk mail and I was when I was younger. And nowadays, you don’t get that much unless you have a whole lot of subscriptions unless you’re you donated somewhere or have have are used to receiving a whole lot of mail, you probably don’t receive that much.

Not like you used to a lot of our bills and everything else has become electronic, so on and so on.

So, in that situation, nowadays, it’s more profitable to use direct mail to market to people because there’s so little competition because it’s so different. It’s so it’s almost odd to receive things in the mail, especially a very clear cut marketing piece that does a good job.

You don’t see those type of things, so what’s old becomes new again.

You’ll see the same things with online stuff. There’s no doubt it will it will always change it will never be exactly the same. But but something old will become nougat which is why I love studying history because you always see, you never see a complete repeat of history.

But you’ll always see history rhyme over time again, someone will pull it out and out an idea. Or you can pull out an idea from something that was done many years ago, and be able to renew it in a new way.

Because human nature, the weird thing is human nature never really changes. It’s just the trends change, the fads, the things that we’re into the things that are in versus the things that are out, the things that are normal versus things that are crazy.

Those things change, societal preferences change. But humans as a whole don’t change. Human Nature doesn’t change, we get used to certain things, and then we started going in a different direction.

But then we get used to that and we find ourselves eventually back in the same spot doing the same things, fashions come and go, and then come back again 20 years later, just how it works.

If you realize this, then you will never completely throw away ideas, you may shelve it for a while, you may take an idea, an advertisement that isn’t working today, shelve it for a little while, and then try it again later.

And it probably will work it may take a little bit of tweaking to make it fit.

But these ideas if they work one time, they will work again eventually. So never toss away history. Never, never forget that.

The Tattooed ban isn’t a freak forever. It just, you just don’t see it, you don’t see something like that stick long term is these are short term ideas.

Take advantage of them.

Take advantage of the freaks in your neck of the woods to gain attention.

This is how you get attention.

At one time anyone suggesting that someone like Donald Trump could be president?

People would would would say that’s absurd that people on all sides of the aisle would say that’s absurd, and yet it happened. So then something that’s odd, becomes reality.

So where’s that leave reality reality now normal?

What was one time considered normals considered odd?

It’s you can see it in all forms of nature, the best thing to do is just be able to sit back, acknowledge it, and they say, okay, how can I use this to my benefit?

How can I use this in order to gain attention?

I talked all about this, the concept of standing out in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

Because really, the main concept is how do you stand out?

How do you stand out so much against competitive forces in your industry, that they’re no longer competition?

That’s the key.

Go grab a copy of my book, or you can download a free copy AmazonProofBook.com That’s all I got for tonight. We’ll see you tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Humans Don’t Change 😐

Posted on by brianjpombo

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When it comes to how humans function, have things really changed over the ages?

Transcription

Humans don’t change.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I want to talk about a principle that is fundamental to really all businesses and specifically to business communications, business marketing. It has to do with the idea that people app on a very concrete foundational level doesn’t actually change.

They function the same way they did 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, and 5,000 years before that, or however long humans have been walking around.

They really, really, really don’t change.

They are political philosophies based on the concept of changing human nature but humans don’t really change, they function the same way. In the end it doesn’t matter what your culture is, it doesn’t matter what time period you’re living in.

That’s why I love old books because all books prove this.

If you study Shakespeare, if you study any of the old classics, you realize, that people are talking about the same things they were talking about a long time ago.

They’re dealing with all the same conflicts and all the same garbage that we deal with today. If you look at the wars that are happening around the world, right now, it’s the same reasons and possibilities that happened for all the other wars.

I mean, it’s all the same stuff, it’s the same thing, going over and over again, it’s like that, you know, someone said that history doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes a lot, you know, it’s very, very, very similar.

It’s because people fundamentally do not change.

Now, this doesn’t mean that things won’t change within your business.

It doesn’t mean that one technology that you use today, is going to be available tomorrow and that people will relate to it the same way. There are cultural things that always change, that stuff is always changing. But fundamentally, people are the same.

Fundamentally, people have things they want and you got to find a way to show them how to get it.

I mean, one way or the other, whatever it is, I don’t care if you have a business or if you’re running an organization, or if you’re writing a charity, or what have you.

If you’re looking to do something you have something you want and the way for you to get what you want is to help other people get what they want.

You say, Well, what about a charity, but that’s not really the same thing. You’re asking for money to do what you want, yeah, but you’re offering something in return, you’re offering. If nothing else you’re offering the feeling that comes from providing help to that specific charity.

If you don’t think that’s important, you don’t know people, because it is important, because the charities that raised the most amount of money are the ones that are able to communicate clearly the feeling, or any other result that the person is going to get from donating or donating more than they did before.

But once again, this has to do with business also. People are always the same, all you got to do is make yourself a student of human nature, make yourself a student of behavioral psychology.

That’s why you can read old books that they still apply.

That’s why I talk about all these old books, you know, the Think and Grow Rich, the How to Win Friends and Influence People, all these ones, that deal with human nature.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in direct sales of any format, or whether you’re dealing with, you know, international marketing, it’s the same thing.

You just need to find out what people want, and you find a way to show them how to get it. And you then you you’ve got to find a way how to profit off of that, right?

Either you’re working for somebody else, or you’re a business owner, which a lot of people who watch this, I’m speaking to business owners or people who want to become business owners.

Now, that’s a fundamental principle. So how do you take that and make it and you know, translate it into strategies?

I talked about that in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. These are strategies that are going to help you become competition-proof in whatever marketplace you’re in, in whatever industry. It’s a quick book, but it’ll put you on the right track, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I have for today, you have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Does Trash-Talking Work? 🥊 (One of Muhammad Ali’s Superpowers)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Thoughts on sports and trash-talking in real-life (Muhammad Ali) or a football field, to the movies (Apollo Creed) to even comedy actors in wrestling like Andy Kaufman.

How trash-talking is used as an effective form of intimidation in life.

Transcription

Does trash-talking work?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I wanted to talk about this, is kind of a second in the series that we’re doing, having to do with manipulation through marketing, and just a general manipulation to human beings.

It just happens. It’s automatic and understanding these elements of human behavior, allows you to communicate with people better in your marketing, and also to not fall into a lot of the traps that people tend to fall into.

When you’re dealing with trying to get people to do what you want them to do, which is what really what marketing and sales are about. You’re trying to encourage people to do a certain thing. And hopefully, it’s a good thing.

But it makes no difference whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, the same principles in place.

And so what I’m going to talk about is trash-talking.

Trash-talking and sports is a model for something. It’s a model for intimidation. It’s a model for getting attention. It’s a model for outrageousness.

It happens on so many different levels with humans, but sports is just an obvious place. And one of the most obvious places I’ve got a book here I’ve shown it before. This is a really good book by Bob Zmuda, on Andy Kaufman.

Andy Kaufman was a comedian in the 70s and 80s, who really got into he always enjoyed the theatrical of the whole thing, and was very much a well, very much a performance artist.

He would enjoy professional wrestling before professional wrestling really went mainstream in the 80s and 90s. And he got into the trash-talk persona, and able to really put it out there.

It’s what wrestling is professional wrestling is known for American professional wrestling is known for you would not have really, I don’t know, maybe a third or a half of the entire performance that happens is this back and forth trash-talking, which is just intimidation, outrageousness, making outrageous statements, and you see it in the most extreme form there.

But you also see it on a level of professional sports, when we’re talking about Muhammad Ali, one of the best trash-talkers of all time, in terms of just saying these outrageous statements about how great he was about how he was going to destroy the other person.

In an almost poetic way, he would get away with this outrageous talk. And people loved it, they enjoy it, they love hearing it, they know it’s partially a game, it’s partially just a process.

But at the same time, there’s an intimidation factor that happens.

So when I played football in high school, the same thing would occur, you’d have some guy on the other side of the field, and I was aligned. You’d have some guy on the other side, just saying the most outrageous things about your mother and everything else, just to intimidate just to get you to react. This is what we talked a lot about yesterday about that reaction factor, there has to be a reaction at some point.

Either you’re reacting to them, or they’re reacting to you or you’re able to stand outside of that game, and not play it. But there tends to be a reaction back and forth.

The person that is reacting, is losing to the person that is causing the reaction to happen, which is provoking the reaction. And so that’s what you see in professional sports over and over again.

You see it even to the point that it bleeds over into entertainment, in terms of you know, the Rocky movies, every person Rocky’s ever been against has been a provoker you know, the Apollo Creed and, you know, Mr. T’s character and all the rest.

They’re all these outrageous trying to get the other person’s goat so to speak. And the whole thing is that works. The reason why they trash-talk is that it works.

It really brings something out of the other side, it causes either resentment, or, at the very least annoyance, and if you’re able to get the other person annoyed, you’ve gained something over them.

And so you see this even used in advertising, one of the most up rightest examples or outrageous examples was a see if I’ve got just random that I’m pulling this stuff out.

Because I’m trying to remember names and seeing and seeing if I have any great pictures here.

Billy Mays, I don’t know if you remember Billy Mays, he used to do these OxiClean commercials. here’s a whole chapter about him. Really good book by now. That’s a good one up. But there’s a whole chapter all about Billy Mays, and his persona is outrageous in your face, loud, obnoxious person.

It gets attention, it gets a reaction. I know this is driving a bunch of people crazy that I just made my shelf go sideways, I will put it back to normal, don’t worry.

But I wanted to see if I had a good explanation, this is all off the cuff, I don’t have anything to show you right there.

But Billy Mays was this outrageous character he didn’t trash talk. But in a sense, he would get people reacting and you have to have a little bit of that.

Somewhere in your marketing, you have to cause some form of you’ve got to cause people to stop in their thought process and come over to you and listen to what you have to say.

Even in its most mild way, there has to be some form of reaction for you to be able to move forward. This is how people conversate in its most extreme, you get situations to where you have people taking over countries like Hitler, I mean, Hitler, the outrageousness, the cartoony behavior of Hitler is no accident.

And it’s no accident that very, that a lot of the outrageous dictators through time, all have these crazy movements and everything else.

It’s all this game of back and forth of reacting and causing a reaction. And that it in its worst-case scenario, causes a controlling factor. But in its best-case scenario, and it’s the very subtle scenario, you just have a back and forth and human beings learning how to interact with each other.

The problem is we don’t talk about it very often. And so a lot of people get steamrolled by outrageous characters and outrageous people because they just don’t know how to handle it.

But in its lightest place that likes in sports is a great place to be able to see it.

You see how it works out over time, and how it annoys people, and also propels these characters up into infamy and into fame just because of little subtle things that they do, which first started to annoy people or to get attention.

And then it became something much bigger and I’m we have a perfect example of it tomorrow. So come back tomorrow and I’m going to get back to the example that Brad mentioned to me last week, and we’re going to get into that tomorrow so come back then.

In the meantime, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You get a free copy, at least for now over at AmazonProofBook.com you have a great night.

Get out there and let the magic happen.