Consider this scenario:
Your first trip to LA. You’re standing in Whole Foods looking at the blood oranges(yeah they exist) thinking “what the hell is this sh$t? I mean it looks good but is it red in the middle?” All of a sudden you hear a voice four feet to your left. “Brooo, I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes. They are good…Reeeeaaaal good. And no…There’s no blood” You look up and do a quadruple take. “Are you who I think you are?” He responds with, “Ummmm…Who do you think I am?” You say, “brad Pitt…?” He quickly fires back with a smile on his face, “Oh no way, that guy’s got nothing on my looks and charisma. Thanks though. Enjoy the blood oranges. They’re amazing.” You watch him walk away as if he’s Moses parting the sea ahead of him.
You shake your head in disbelief of what just happened as you walk towards the front the front to meet up with your friend who was looking for $10/lb organic bananas(yeah…They’re just about that god damn expensive at Whole Foods). You and your friend pay for your super healthy super organic food and as you open the doors to your brand new Accord Hybrid and sit down your friend blurts out, “Did you see Brad Pitt? Dude he was just ahead of me while I was waiting for you. I wanted to talk to him. I hear he’s pretty cool in person.”
You start laughing and then it dawns on you why he is who he is…
Now this is obviously not a true story, but it damn well could be. The lesson here is simple. My fictitious Brad Pitt was used to prove a point. The real Mr. Pitt is clearly a guy who could go the rest of his days not saying a damn thing to anyone about anything or better yet when he does say something he is nothing but an arrogant prick. But in this scenario he is cool. He is humble. He’s got jokes. And to top things off, he goes out of his way to spark a conversation with you! And who are you? Can you improve his life in anyway? Will he get ahead by talking to you? Of course not!…At least not directly. So why did he talk to you and why was he so cool with you?
My version of Brad Pitt is very extroverted, down to earth, and flat out enjoys connecting with people. However, as you know, I like to define things and give them nice little marketing terms. What Mr. Pitt did here was Humanize. Humanize? What is that?…Well blog reader, funny you should ask. Humanizing is the simple process of connecting with people on a very genuine human level of which anyone can relate regardless of ethnicity, age, cultural upbringing, etc. In other words it’s the skill of extreme external awareness in which you are completely in tune with how people around you are feeling and talking to them as such. Let’s put something on this. You are at Fenway Park(I’m from New England, so yeah we’re at Fenway) standing in a massive line at the bathroom. You are far from sober, it’s the 7th inning and you broke the seal in the 2nd inning. You know damn well how this feels so don’t even pretend like you havn’t been here ha! A man behind you knocks into you and a few others. He’s clearly in much worse shape than you are. You are immediately agitated and are about get angry and then all of a sudden your Humanization button turns on. Now humanizing doesn’t mean that you give up your place in line to this drunken idiot but what it does mean is that you are able to calmly deal with this drunkard in a calm and efficient manner. In humanizing you would say something like this, “Hey man, we are all right there with you. When you gotta go you gotta go and believe me…I gotta go! All that we ask is that you please be patient like the rest of us.” More times than not this guy will come to his senses and apologize and step back into line. Oh yeah! Humanizing! You were able to empathize with his situation which let him know that everyone in line shared the same common bond and then slipped in your request. This is of course an extreme example and alcohol is involved which is obviously a game changer and of course the guy in this scenario could react by being an angry drunk a$$hole but you get my point. I used this extreme example because if you can utilize Humanization while drinking then you can utilize it anywhere.
Now let’s bring it back to Mr. Pitt. This is again an extreme example because it involves a celebrity. We often have preconceived notions of somebody at the caliber of Brad Pitt. A buddy of mine put it best when it comes to people at this level; we are in “pre-awe.” We’ve seen Brad Pitt in a ton of movies in which he plays lead roles at an Oscar level, he’s considered one of the sexiest men alive, and women(including our own significant others) would probably drop us faster than a hot coal if they had the chance to get with him. So seeing a guy like him in a place like Wholefoods would be cool to us. Going up to him and saying hello; even cooler. Having him spark a convo with us and supplying us with useful information all while being completely cool and funny; more priceless than a Mastercard commercial moment. You were already in awe of his presence and now because of him taking a minute of his life to communicate with you on a level playing field, your awe of him just multiplied exponentially.
So now as a result of your amazingly cool conversation with Brad Pitt, each and everytime ANYTHING Brad Pitt comes up, you HAVE to tell the story of how awesome he was at Wholefoods. And how many times will you tell this story? Ten times? Twenty Times? More? And how many people will hear this story? Fifty of your friends possibly, maybe more. But guess what, they are going to tell their friends because, well, it’s a pretty cool story. So now as a result of a minute long conversation, you are now a walking billboard for Brad Pitt. If that’s not powerful, I don’t know what is!?
So the next time you start to feel like you are superior to someone, remember, at the end of the day we are all human. Remain humble and always do your best to Humanize!
-Steve
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