"After all," Tomlin's bag lady character muses, "what is reality anyway? Nothin' but a collective hunch.'
Tomlin may have exaggerated, but the successful marketer should question virtually everything - especially her own observations. The brilliant marketer acts with humble openness. She willingly believes she may be wrong, accepts other ways of thinking, and recognizes that prospects may think differently than she does.
And then in another part of the book, it says:
"'As you walk down the street, people in Goofy and Mickey Mouse costumes walk up to you and greet you happily. In various parts of the park, you find a ride through a jungle, a submarine trip, cars that race around a track, and other rides.'
'Would you be interested in such a park?'
'Would you fly two thousand miles to visit it?'
'Would you pay a hundred dollars a day for your family to visit it?'
Almost certainly, the answers to those three quesetions ould have been maybe, no, and absolutely not. And Disneyland and Disney World might never have been built...
The more innovative your idea, the smaller the number of people who will understand it - and people have great trouble imagining that they will buy something they cannot remember...
Even more important, the more innovative the idea, the more uncomfortable people feel about it. Truly new ideas make people uneasy. When Fred Smith trotted his idea for Federal Express by his experienced and intelligent business professors, they thought it would never fly; Federel Express was too different.
You can see the pattern: the more innovative the idea, the less likely it is to survive this kind of scrutiny. And yet, the more innovative the idea, the greater the potential success."
Even though the book is talking about how we can use marketing in our business and some basic understanding of it, I find this section seems so much to be talking about life... And how I would like my life to be... Unassuming, open-minded and hearted and accepting...
Seems like its quite easy to accomplish, but the world is so fixed in its ways, that really, it is quite difficult to change opinions. I'm quite an innovator myself, sometimes with wild and crazy dreams, to want to do this and that. I have always thought of setting up my own business and people used to say that it isn't that easy and that I should do something more stable. And now that I have my own business, I dream of growing it and earning my first million. And yet, people are still telling me, I should find a more stable job, as my finances are suffering now, and I don't have enough CPF for the future. No savings.
But somehow, I feel I have accomplished much in this short life of mine. At least I've done slightly more than most people my age. I may not be earning $3,000-$4,000 a month at the moment, but I believe I will... Just need time... With time and patience, I believe I can make it...
I have believed in dreaming ever since I started to see myself as someone better than who I am now... When I was first given a taste of self worth, when I was in the Students' Council in JJC. Not that I've been optimistic and so positive all my life... I've been through 2 years of depression. Thank God it wasn't serious, just a mild case, but it was enough to drive me crazy, to feel so unsure of myself, to have my mood swing to extrmes through the day.
It was a horrible feeling. It made me and the people around me hate me. And that made things even worse. But I guess with a totally new change of environment, new team of people to work with, new sense of belonging and worth, things took a good change. Off course the people around me played a part in bringing me through to where I am today.
Well, I'll be doing up my goal chart tomorrow, so that I have a benchmark of how much I have achieved and over how long a period of time, so I'll know if I have been successful, according to my dictioonary lah... Heh heh...
So all the best to me, and my dreams... The perception is to individual... May I fulfil my dreams and those around me! YEAH!! =)
