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My 1000th post is upon us.
As it approached, I began thinking about what I wanted share. It had to be phenomenal because @CCarter set the bar high and @built followed with a winner. It's difficult because we've already said so much in the Digital Strategy Crash Course as it is, but what we said was fairly to-the-point without a lot of flair or personality. Here's some personality for you.
With that being said, I dug deep for days and realized, just like the topic of this post, that I didn't need to dig at all...
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
初心 (Shoshin) is the first and last goal for all of us, meaning Beginner's Mind. The further we advance on our path, the temptation arises to form our own reality tunnel. The walls of this tunnel are formed by all of the facts and experiences we've collected along the way.
These walls shouldn't project ahead of us into the future. They are only relevant to times that have already passed, yet we all become very closed off by the very walls we built that brought us to the present... The same walls that sabotage us.
These walls are our own versions of "The Narrative" that I spoke about before. The psychological onion has infinite layers. You can peel them for a lifetime... or you can just set the onion aside.
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." ~ Shunryu Suzuki
何でもあり : Anything-Goes
When you buy into a narrative, whether that's society's storyline for you or one you lay upon yourself, you've closed off the 9,999 options by pre-selecting the one.
Often, no amount of creativity and grinding will bring you to the solution. Perhaps it does, but is that the most efficient solution, the one you had to expend untold time and energy over? We've all experienced a situation in which a complete beginner walks up and non-chalantly drops the obvious into our laps, yet we simply could not see it. They side-stepped all of the complications and intricacies immediately.
Experts have a self-reinforcing, self-reifying Nothing-Goes philosophy. It's their way or the highway... Don't you know who they think they are!?!?
The most pragmatic and practical philosophers in our species' history have come to similar conclusions. The Greek Stoics view reality in the same way as the Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhists...
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus Aurelius
I've taken to calling this the Anything-Goes Philosophy in my own life.
Application of the Anything-Goes Philosophy
By engaging in 初心 we open ourselves up to the Anything-Goes philosophy. The question becomes, how can we apply this in our businesses, specifically with internet marketing?
The problem with modern education (and increasingly purposefully so...) is that there is a directive and incentive to teach people what to think instead of how to think. Beyond that, there is nothing said of how we perceive and how we should evaluate those perceptions. The cognitive frameworks are built for us, and our job is to neatly assimilate all new information into the pre-constructed cubby holes. In this way, we never learn anything new. We relate all additional information and experience to what we already know. We go deeper... we become experts.
With this in mind, my goal isn't to drop some tactics on you and send you on your way. The following ideas are simply examples showing The Way. It's up to you to align yourself with the way so you can use it in every unique situation that arises.
Our goal is to see every situation anew with beginner's perception. Like water, we want to follow the path of least resistance to our goal. This power carves canyons while others are swinging away with pickaxes.
Obstacles aren't presented to stop us in our tracks. They are presented to teach us to dance, to use their momentum for our own benefit. Like the mighty sumo, all we have to do is step out of it's way to become the victor.
What determines value? Value is an abstract concept completely regulated by perception and a narrative. The entire purpose of marketing is to impose your own narrative upon others in order to convince them of value.
As internet marketers, two of our most valuable assets are content and links.
The narrative is that we need high-quality, unique content. I agree with this, but it also subtly constructs a reality tunnel for the masses. You need high-quality content, so spinning is out. Hiring ESL writers from 3rd World Countries is out. The parameters are imposed and the options have been eliminated. You're going to have to hire writers or pay a content agency. Value from this perception is 3¢ a word, 10¢ a word, even $1 per word for copywriting.
So you pay it. You spend $3,000 on content and your website flops. You can't turn a profit. But now the perception of your content's value has shifted. Value is not static nor concrete. The content's value has declined because it's no longer unique. It's been indexed by the search engines. The emphasis has totally been shifted away from the monetary value per word now.
Your website only makes $33.33 a month. You suck it up and sell it for 30x monthly profit for a total of $1,000. Yet one year ago the content itself was worth $3,000 not including the web design, graphic design, links, etc. What happened? "Value."
While there are times that you should most certainly pay the cost for new content (when you can afford it and your time is more valuable), there are ways to sidestep the entire issue. While 99.9% of people are paying for content that never produces a penny and devaluing it in their own eyes, you can buy it "after market" by purchasing their entire website to do as you please with, whether that's 301-ing or creating a Pumper site.
You've just bought content and links for a fractional percentage of what it would have costed you and is constantly costing everyone else. You danced with the obstacle.
Speaking of links, everyone's spending time building links and buying links one at a time. You spend 80 hours across two weeks emailing 1,000 webmasters one at a time to receive 10 links. You pay $300-$800 per contextual on giant sites for exposure and link juice. In the link game, many people have learned to dance The Dance. Buying expired domains is one method. Paying for editorials is another.
You can ask 1,000 webmasters one at a time, positioning yourself as weaker, valueless competitor. Or you can put yourself in front of 100,000 webmasters with one swing of your sword, positioning yourself as the leader who obtains traffic, revenue, and links without asking anyone.
There are countless ways around this obstacle...
Example 2: "Raising Awareness"
As the little guy, you simply can't compete with mega-corporations. You can't pay 50¢ CPC's and $5 CPM's across every network out there, 24/7. You can't call your contact and have billboards fly up across the country's interstates and intersections. And you can't cheat and get a pass like they do.
Why pay for a mega-campaign when they are doing the work for you? Why should you spend $10,000,000 to find out who all comprises a certain demographic when someone else already did?
Maybe I want to sell my new plugin to webmasters and I can't garner enough exposure on forums due to the platform and the hierarchical aspect of being a part of a community. I don't want to pay for banner ads to be seen and clicked by 5 million people when only 500,000 are in my demographic. How can I dance?
I can identify those who've come before me and found the target audience. I can pay them for an email blast out to their list or offer a rev-share for the blast. I can team up with this person and let them use their influence to promote the product as if it is their own creation.
Forget forums. I could move over to Facebook and build a fan page based around how much I love my competitors. I can post their content to fill up the page, target their fans with ads until I reach a critical mass, and then boost a post to my own site to all of them now that I've caught them off guard. They'll never know it's my site and they'll be used to clicking all of the great resources I offer. Many will share and help me reach those my advertisements didn't. When they land on my page, I drop a retargeting pixel on them. Now they are mine. I can join groups as a fan and repeat the procedure, sharing till they are off guard and then hitting them with my own.
Imagine sitting at a Kingdom Chinese Buffet, comfortable and full. You crack open your fortune cookie and instead of some platitude, you receive a 33% off coupon for your first visit to the new buffet down the road. This is how you get it done.
The examples above are rudimentary and generic. I recalled them as I typed. These are likely concepts you've seen in action before or have thought of yourself, only because they are common scenarios and strategies shared before. The idea is for you to think about how the solution was created, not the solution itself.
The true mind-blowing power of the Anything-Goes approach comes with each unique scenario you find yourself in. The Way forward is a living, breathing essence that you will tap into each time. There are no pre-conceived methods in the Beginner's Mind. Each confrontation is seen with a fresh pair of eyes.
This is how David kills Goliath. How the Goldfish eats the Shark.
Each obstacle begs for you to confront it head on.
You and your competitor reach a mile-high mountain. He begins to attempt to figure out how to best climb over the mountain, as others have done before him. He starts researching survival tips and the best gear for the ascent. He needs to pack non-perishable food as lightly as possible. He spends a fortune preparing himself. He sets off on his journey.
You, on the other hand, borrow somebody else's car and drive around it.
