I was listening to Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer’s audiobook “The Conspiracy of the Unmotivated” and it occurred to me this was one of the biggest reasons I love working in aviation.
Although the rest of the world may be struck with a profound malaise and overcome with excuses; aviators, on the other hand, are NOT unmotivated people.
I talk to a lot of people every week, many of whom are not aviators, or it’s been a long time since they’ve flown. You can tell this because most of them are very nice, agreeable, pleasant people, but they would rather make excuses than make money.
If we have an hour to spend together, they will spend forty five minutes of it giving very good and creative reasons why nothing will work, despite any efforts to turn the conversation to a constructive direction. They blame the economy, the President, their divorce, their plumber, their kids, and their accountant for the fact that their competitors are passing them as if they were backing up.
They won’t invest in marketing, they won’t take risks with their product, pricing, or positioning, They won’t give quarter to any possibility of improvement in their situation.
There’s nothing I can do to help them. And I don’t take them as clients. (I have a neat little questionnaire to weed them out so that I don’t take their money and they don’t take my time.)
Aviators, on the other hand, find a way or make a way.
If their current market isn’t buying their current product or service, they’ll research new markets or ask their customers what they’d like to see changed. If they don’t have the capital to do a direct mail campaign, they find a partner and do a joint mailing. If they don’t have the right contacts on their list, they’ll find someone who is in touch with the right people and come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement.
If they need to learn a skill, they get a book or video or they’ll hire a consultant. If they’re not technically inclined, they’ll get someone with computer expertise. If writing’s not their thing, (or they don’t have the time) they’ll hire a ghostwriter.
They may be conservative with their money, but they’re willing to give value for honest value, and they’re NOT conservative with their optimism, creativity, resourcefulness and work ethic.
There are couple of reasons for this:
- People who are afraid to take risks and really live life stay in their nice safe corporate cubicle and stay far away from this industry. There is no “comfort zone” here.
- In an airplane, pilots use the airspeed and altitude they’ve got to work with, and don’t waste a split second or an erg of energy arguing about why things should be different than they are. Indecision can get you killed.
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Aviation Marketing
