Change your narrative - Simon Sinek

 So, I wanted to prove that all marketing is the same thing. No matter what you're selling, it was always the same thing. And good marketing talks about the buyer. And bad marketing talked about the seller. Make sense? "I" versus "you." So, to illustrate my point I wanted to prove that what the homeless do and what Microsoft does is the same thing.

So, if you think about what the homeless do there is advertising. They sit there with a little sign that says, "I'm homeless, I'm hungry, I've got six kids, I'm a veteran ..." trying to appeal to everybody. That's called a little billboard. Microsoft has a billboard that says, "More memory, bigger screen ..." all the rest of it.

More RAM, more ROM. And what the homeless are selling is goodwill. So, if you walk past a homeless person and you put money in their cup, you feel good. If you give them nothing, you either feel nothing or feel bad. You paid for that feeling. There was an exchange of consideration. I sold you goodwill, you paid for it, you got it. They're selling goodwill, that's what they're doing. 

They're selling the feeling of goodwill. So I found a homeless person who was willing to help me and her sign was pretty typical I found out that she makes between twenty and thirty dollars a day selling goodwill. And she works an eight to ten-hour day.

Thirty dollars is considered a good day, selling goodwill. And like I said, her sign was pretty typical. So I asked her if I could change her sign and we did. And the sign that I gave her, she made forty dollars in two hours. The sign that I gave her said, "If you only give once a month, please think of me next time.

" It wasn't about the seller, it was about the giver. What are the reasons people say they don't give? How do I know that they're genuine, I can't give to everyone. So, I simply answered the questions. If you can only give once a month, please think of me next time. I know you can't give to everybody, I'm legit.

That's all. Now here's the point I was going to make. She could have made one hundred and fifty dollars that day. But after she made her forty dollars in two hours, she left. Because one of the reasons she's homeless, or we could surmise that one of the reasons she's homeless is she's decided that she needs twenty or thirty dollars to live per day.

 So, once she had it, she moved on. That's a narrative. So she'll stay there because she didn't sit longer. That's a narrative. So there's a wonderful little trick you can use with your narrative. Just add the word 'yet' at the end. I'm not famous, yet. I'm not that talented, yet.

I'm not good at auditions, I need to get better at auditions, I suck at auditions, for now. You can just add a couple of words of hope or opportunity, or the potential for the future, or some sort of infinite component that will profoundly change your narrative.