Next time you hear people talking about history repeating itself, I'm hoping you will think about this.  None of us remember the era when all commerce was localized -- meaning, anyone you did business with lived in your immediate community.  There was no such thing as advertising, marketing channels and brands.  You did business with people you knew.  It was not an "information economy" and nothing was mass produced.  It was a Trust Economy.  So what am I talking about when I say that history repeats itself?   ...welcome back to the Trust Economy.

When it comes to using social platforms to create awareness for your service, product or brand - you have to remember that this is not your typical marketing channel.  As consumers, we are weary of "marketing speak," suspicious of "buzz" (it can be bought) and we don't trust strangers.  We are back to square one.  In a Trust Economy, your market is your community or network, trust is mandatory and influence is king.

Return On Influence - The Basics

If you want to understand how to create trust and affect individuals authentically, imagine yourself moving into a new neighborhood.  You've just entered a new community.  So how do you meet people?  This is the exact construct social media platforms emulate.  Would you immediately start going door-to-door peddling your product or service to your neighbors?  I would hope the answer to that question is NO.  But over time, as your community gets to know you, the trust and reputation you have built will no doubt lead to talk about what you do.  So keep these things in mind:

• You can't fake a relationship
• Relationships come before sales
• Business is not the first order of business
• Your personal brand comes first

Leveraging your relationships is a great way to increase awareness of your product, service or brand -- but you actually have to become a respected and trusted member of your community and nurture your own network before you can tap into it's potential.

Work Life Integration

So I just mentioned that your personal brand comes first.  For organizations, this logic will seem counter-intuitive and will require understanding of the social construct.  However, no matter how you look at it, the lines between our work and our social life are blurring.  For example - childhood friends are now being reconnected thru facebook and becoming business associates.  Business are invading facebook like a pack of 4 yr. olds will invade a Chuck-E-Cheese.  Corporate recruiters are sourcing talent from LinkedIn, Twitter and even MySpace.  In the end, interactions are interpersonal - people do business with people (not brands) and the economic environment we once knew is systematically being turned on it's head (Judy Martin got me thinking about this).

Personal Interactions = Network ROI

So here we are back in a Trust Economy except our localized market is now global.  Thru the ubiquity of technology, we are able to have rich, personal interactions and find meaningful connections with others.  As always, when it comes to relationships, you get back more than you give.  First and foremost, we are creatures here to serve one another.  It's a tried and true principle that is undeniable.  We just have more tools to serve each other more effectively and more efficiently.

Attention = Currency

One of the most rare things on earth is a person's attention.  Between email, 30,000 ad messages a day and life in general, our time is our most precious commodity.  We have become masters at filtering out anything that is not meaningful to us NOW.  So go out and join the conversation.  Listen to people.  Answer their questions.  Be of service without regard and be meaningful to people NOW.

Authentic Influence

Let people get to know you, trust you and befriend you.  You will create meaningful relationships that get integrated socially and professionally.  The more you give, the more you get.  Relationships are back.  We are built to affect and influence one another.  Your interests will become social objects and awareness of them will radiate thru your network.  These authentic alliances are what all relationships are built on.  This is not something you can fake.  It's something you must embrace.

It is important to work to understand as many of the working pieces in your craft but true genesis lies beyond words and true creativity is creating something where there is not.  Nobody can tell you where your own success lies and you won't find success in the place it is not.  There's a Japanese proverb that says "The Reverse Side Also Has A Reverse Side."  These words mixed with Buddha's last - "Conditioned things are perishable; with vigilance strive to succeed" have inspired the notion behind this post as I relate them to myself, creativity and the things I pragmatically work thru on a daily basis.  So let's step back and dispel some conventional thinking first.

Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." What he was getting at is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat themselves.  So if that sounds interesting, then let's explore that for a moment, shall we?

Predictive Models Are Overrated

Have you ever taken some time to consider that in marketing, advertising and business in general (or government for that matter), there is an enormous amount of time, money and resource spent on prediction.  There is a power law distribution for every PowerPoint and every occasion. As humans, our brains are wired for linear instead of exponential outcomes or statistical uncertainties.    We end up looking for simple stories to tell ourselves that explain the complex things we don't--and, most importantly, can't know.

Accept That Order Is A Short-Lived Illusion

The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas.  You've probably heard of "The Butterfly Effect."  The whole notion is that we live in a "dynamical system" where small variations of "initial conditions" can create huge variance in the long-term behavior of that system.  In fewer words, there is no way of knowing the affect of a single action due to the infinite variations and unintended consequences of the re-action in an environment where change is constant.

Personally, I believe that we are all part of a system where if we were in a position to know the state and flux of all variables including the infinite number of changing variables that occur every split second and how those variables affect the corresponding infinite variables that there is a predictive model that has no differential equations and works to a reliable certainty.  Unfortunately for all of us this falls in the category of "Divine Providence."

So how do we create order in a such a complex world?  Forget about it.   I'm up for a different approach, how about you?  To me, the tension is prediction vs preparedness where success lies in preparing for and embracing uncertainty.

You Must Have Chaos Within You To Give Birth To A Dancing Star

That was written by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.  Nietzsche loved to dance.  He believed that dance was the most genuine expression of the soul; our souls being as complex of an environment as the universe itself.  What I take this to mean is that success, creativity and happiness itself is more about embracing the unknown than making calculated and deliberate actions toward a preconceived outcome.  I think this is his way of defining "the passion quotient" that virtually every writer of success points to as it's basis.  Find what makes you happy and you will find where your creativity and pathway to success is.  Embrace your "self" and have faith in the uncertain.  It kinda goes hand-n-hand.  Passion and faith in your passion is the foundational piece to overcoming any obstacle life throws at you.  So now that we've "Embraced Chaos" and found our passion, how do we pragmatically conquer our uncertain world.

Passion Breeds Preparedness

So maybe you have found your passion.  Maybe you, like me, were told as a child "you can be anything you want to be (or do anything you want to do) when you grow up."  A more correct answer is "you can do anything you are PREPARED to do." It was Thomas Edison who said "Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."  Passion goes a LONG way.  However, in Edison's case, it was only 1 percent of the equation.  Now I don't necessarily agree with his equation but his point is valid.  My equation, especially in today's ever-changing and complex world, is a little different.

Preparedness Breeds Awareness And Opportunity

I have talked with many extraordinary and successful people.  When asked, pretty much every one of them told me that the events that made the most profound difference in their success were not created by their will to succeed but by being in the right place, at the right time, with the right tools and the right domain expertise -- domain expertise developed thru passion, awareness and preparation.  In other words, any amount of pontificating or previous research could not have created or foretold of the opportunities that actually made a difference in almost all the cases I've come across.  Success is about stumbling on the right opportunity at the right time with the right skillset and the right perspective to notice it.

Being prepared in a chaotic world to deal with complexity to create and facilitate value is the key.  So luck DOES have a LOT to do with it.  But you don't get lucky sitting on the couch - no matter how much talent you have; which brings us to the next rivalry....

You Can't Rely On Talent

I just got thru reading Malcom Gladwell's latest book Outliers: The Story of Success.  One chapter is devoted to time.  Time & practice being the great equalizer.  Time spent practicing or in "preparation."  It's about the notion that; no matter how talented you are on day one, after 10,000 hours of practice, the talent you had or did not have on day one becomes virtually irrelevant.  Take Tiger Woods.  He had an obvious talent for golf at an extraordinarily young age.  Where do you think we would be if Tiger wasn't just as legendary in his work ethic and didn't put in years and years and years of practice?  We would have never heard of Tiger Woods.  So what is it that can take a talented child and drive them to become the best of the best?  It still comes down to preparation.  There are golfers out there, who never had the God given talent Tiger had that are competitive and in many times, surpasses him in the sport.  Preparation overcomes all.

Don't I Blog About Digital Media, Interactive Marketing & Flat World Implications?

I wrote this post because I have been working on building an extraordinary team.  There has been a lot of discussion on what type of people to look for when it comes to building products in the digital space.  I want to work with people who are creative and do not need to be managed.  People who, as a group, can be pointed in a direction and succeed; more times than not.  In today's flat world, any less won't cut it.  So yeah.. I do blog about digital media, interactive marketing & flat world implications