Category / influence

by Nathan Coumbe

Do you know a virtuous person?

Who do you know who is courageous?

Wise?

Disciplined?

Just?

Do you know anyone who embodies all four of these cardinal virtues?

How much better would things be if you had a boss like this? A coworker or employee?

How would the world improve if we had leaders like this?

It’s hard to succeed with only one or two. You need all four to be truly effective.

The German soldiers who steamrolled Europe were courageous and disciplined. But they were brave and disciplined for the most unwise and unjust of reasons.

You can probably think of several people who were incredibly wise… But who lacked the courage to stand up and do the right thing when the time called for action.

We need more virtuous people in the world.

They aren’t born this way. They make themselves so.

by Nathan Coumbe

Expertise must come before audience

We have the process backward for becoming well-known.

The current wisdom is to become famous (most likely on social media) to obtain a big audience. Once you have said audience, you can make a living off them by selling their attention or whatever random idea you decide to push.

However, the opposite approach is not only less sleazy but will also lead to lasting rather than fleeting success.

Imagine building a huge following on social media, then selling financial advice (or God forbid, products!) to that audience without knowing anything about the field. You’d quickly be labeled a fraud or scam artist. (Unfortunately, this happens every day.)

If, instead, you started by building your expertise in the field of finance, then built an audience who would benefit from your knowledge, you would have a group of people who trusted you. And trust is almost as good as currency in the modern economy.

by Nathan Coumbe

The only thing we have in common

There is exactly ONE THING that all human beings have in common with each other:

We are all completely different.

We all see things differently. We’ve all had different experiences, good and bad. We were born physically different. We were raised in different cultures.

And we’d be fools to believe this didn’t affect the decisions we make and the things we want. 

Once we understand that, we can begin to work with each other to actually make things better.

by Nathan Coumbe

If I do nothing else…

I hope that I can inspire other people to find their voice and make the impact they were born to make on the world. 

There are few ideas I’ve come across that have resonated more with me than Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit:

“Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.”

I want to help make people better. That is all. 

by Nathan Coumbe

The mark of an educated mind

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

—Aristotle

We have the ability to see and understand each others’ points of view, even if we disagree with them. 

But until we actually begin to practice this—to entertain their thoughts—we will be unable to influence anyone. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Ruining a business is simple

It amazes me how one person can have such a tremendous effect on a business’s success or failure.

I’m talking, of course, about the experience someone has when they interact with any one individual employee of a business.

If the customer has a bad experience, the obvious thing that’ll happen is they’ll swear off the company completely.

“Well, I’m never going back to that place…”

And the funny thing is this: after a few months, or even a few years, that person who delivered the horrible experience is probably long gone…

Yet you STILL never go back. 

They don’t just ruin things in the moment – they ruin them long-term… Possibly forever. 

And let’s not forget the fact that if the employee threw a tantrum in front of lots of other customers, they probably won’t come back either.

But it goes even further than that.

Do you know what people love to talk about even more than a great experience?

The worst experience they’ve ever had!

That’s why all the reviews for every single business you’ll ever read are 90% one-stars. 

Nobody ever writes about a decent, 3-star experience they had… And we rarely take the time to write about the great experiences – it’s too much work.

But when we’re angry, fuming, and vengeful, nothing gives us more satisfaction than to feel like we’re ruining a business.

So we tell the others. And word spreads. And those people who’ve never had a bad experience with the business decide not to patronize it… For fear of having a bad experience. 

Here’s a simple idea for all of us in business: adopt the ideas of Victor Krulak, the former commandant of the US Marine Corps. 

He wrote about the “strategic corporal” which insists that the entire outcome of a war rests solely on the lowest paid, most beaten-down, hardest working Marine on the frontline. 

That Marine bears the brunt of the fighting. And if they do something terrible, they ruin the image of an entire nation… Especially now that everything is seen by everybody.

The solution is to treat your lowest paid, frontline employees as the most important part of your organization. Because they absolutely are!

Those who deal with customers on a daily basis are the strongest marketing force you have, aside from the customers themselves through word-of-mouth.

Treat them as the most important people in your company, compensate them well, and train them to represent the brand you want your business to embody.

by Nathan Coumbe

Stories sell

No one cares about the features of anything. What they want to know is how it helps them.

“What do these features do for me?”

A friend of mine was asking about the internet provider we use in our home. Naturally, I wanted to sell him on the service that we use because I think it’s the best.

So I told him, “You get up to one gig upload and download speeds.’

Then I thought about it for a second and realized this: most people don’t know what that means. More importantly, they don’t care. 

So I changed up my approach and told a story instead.

I told him that some of the projects I do each week for work have to be uploaded to Vimeo. “With our old Internet provider, I explained, “it would take me between 15 and 20 minutes to upload a single video. Now, with this new provider, it only takes me about 20 to 30 seconds to do the same thing.”

He was sold, right then and there.

Stories are how we humans make sense of the world. Stories are also what sells—anything and everything.

No matter what you’re trying to persuade someone to do, find a way to tell them a story about it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Inconvenience sells

I was leaving the gym this morning when I started checking my pockets for my car keys. 

Then I thought, “Why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?”

Since I see the world through the lens of marketing, I came up with a theory:

Maybe women’s clothes don’t have pockets so industrialists could sell more purses. 

Before there were purses, there were pockets in everything. You needed to be able to carry your stuff around with you.

I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the people who made and sold purses. When presented with a fancy new bag, I’m sure customers thought, “Why do I need a heavy, expensive bag to carry my stuff when I have pockets?”

But if you get rid of the pockets, you make things inconvenient. You’ve created a new need—the need to have something to carry your stuff around in.  

(Let’s not even get started on all the accessories sold simply to carry around in a purse…)

If this is true, it goes to prove a great (potentially immoral) marketing point:

If you don’t have a problem, make one up, then sell the solution. 

Marketers do this to us all the time. We need to be aware of it.

Are you actually being inconvenienced, or did a sly marketer make it that way?

by Nathan Coumbe

Your dying day

We are all mortal, which means all of us will die someday. That’s obvious.

But there are a few questions we don’t know the answer to, such as…

How long will that be?

How miserable will our dying be?

But there are some other, less depressing questions we can ask as well. And they happen to be questions we can answer on a daily basis…

How did I make life less difficult for others?

How did I influence things for the better?

Better to focus on what you can act on rather than worrying about the unknowns.

by Nathan Coumbe

Respect must come before respect

You can’t treat children as less than human, then expect them to give you respect in return. 

Just because they aren’t yet adults doesn’t mean they don’t deserve dignity and respect. 

“Children should be seen but not heard…” That was the mantra many adults from my parents’ generation lived by (though, thankfully, not mine).

They have tiny, yet insightful opinions. They possess creativity and vivid imaginations you’d kill to reclaim. 

And their questions are incisive enough to make even the wisest philosophers question their views.

The Golden Rule applies to our kids as well as our peers…