Socrates was considered a man of vast knowledge. His lessons of ancient Greek life are still very relevant today. I can relate one of his simple yet poignant lessons by telling a story about Socrates.
Socrates was sitting out on the veranda overlooking Athens reading some scrolls. Just then a man came through the entryway with a determined look. He was almost out of breath. He exclaimed to Socrates, “Socrates, I have something to tell you! It’s very important! Someone said something about you. Do you want to hear it?” Socrates was not excited nor curious in the least. He said, “First, can I ask you a few questions?” The messenger said, “Of course.” Socrates slowly looked up at the messenger and asked, “Do you personally know this person?” The messenger replies, “Ahh. No. But I think you do.” Socrates then said, “Did you personally witness this person saying something about me?” “Well no” said the messenger, “But I heard it from a reliable source.” Socrates sighed and finally said, “Was it something negative?” The messenger looked down at the ground and said, “Yes, it was something negative”. With that Socrates stood up and said, “So you want to tell me something negative about myself, by a person you do not know, and you did not even witness them saying it? As for the answer to the original question that you asked me, “Do you want to hear it?”, “No. I’ll pass.”
What’s this got to do with marketing? Well there are many hurdles all of us as marketers have to work through but this basic Socratic lesson tells us not to listen to all the negativity surrounding and inundating us. It’s bad enough the fall victim to the daily news but you’ll hear a version of this one sentence repeated over and over, sometimes even in your own thoughts. That is, “You can’t do that?” When you hear those words, you immediately think of “why?”. Your not smart enough. You’ve never done that before. It won’t work. It’s a scam. It cost too much. It’s too risky. You name it. You will hear many variations of that theme.
What do you do when you hear or think those thoughts? And hear them you will. Especially when you tell people your an online marketer! Oh no, the horrors! LOL. You should be saying to yourself, I can do it. No risk no reward. I’m very smart. There’s no reason I can’t succeed, others have. Boy am I going to make some money!
So when someone wants to tell you something negative, you simple need to say, “No, I’ll pass.”
This is a great post I like your Socrates example it is really intelligently written.