One man and a pile of junk ends poverty
Orismar de Souza, a homeless man in Brazil, built a car using junk, spare parts and a hammer and chisel. Four years later, the “shrimpmobile” has him back on his feet.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42329229/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
This story mirrors the story of my great grandfather, James Dodd. He had worked as a coal miner since he was 8 years old to support his mother and siblings. During the great depression he and a friend built a motorcycle from spare parts and road to Detroit to find work in the factories. They left their wives and children behind and when they got to Detroit had to camp out waiting to find work. Remember, at the time there were barely any paved roads. They had to ride through the mountains of Pennsylvania, across Ohio and into Michigan on a single motorcycle they built from junk.
They had to camp for a month before they could get work. They then saved money and sent for there wives and children to join them. At one point my great grandfather had not eaten for a week. When the women who had been renting a room to him found out she offered him food. He insisted that he would not accept charity and instead did work on the house in exchange for meals.
At one point while working in the factory his job was to test alternators. he would put the bad alternators in a box. He arranged to buy the bad ones then at night in his kitchen he would repair them and sell the re-manufactured alternators to repair shops and people fixing their own cars. He eventually quit the job at the factory and was running his own business.
He invested the money from the alternator business into fixing up and renting houses. At one point he had an entire neighborhood with a grocery store which he would allow his tenets with children who had trouble paying the bills to owe him for food until they could find work. The one rule he had was that they had their children ready to go to church which he would drive them them to in the school bus he bought.
When he died the procession of people who attended his funeral was over a mile long. He touched thousands of people’s lives and it all started from a pile a junk.
Evangelism Marketing Workshop
The Boardwalk Creative Center in Ann Arbor, MI, “Michigan’s most creative meeting space” will host my next hands-on Evangelism Marketing Workshop. I’ll show you how to “Make your customers so happy they freely sell your products for you.” This is way beyond Word-Of-Mouth and Viral. The methods I teach will show you how to create, motivate, and track loyal fans who spread the word of your product.
As customers have more choices and control over media and products traditional interrupt based advertising is losing its effectiveness. Many companies are turning to online marketing, but going about it all wrong. They still try to force you to see their ads with pop-ups or spam or banner ads. Search-based techniques are better but depend on your customers knowing you exist and looking for you. How do you reach people with something new and better?
Evangelism Marketing is the answer. People are much more likely to buy a product recommended from a trusted friend. You might even ask certain friends for recommendations on things they have expertise. This bridges the knowledge and confidence gap. Additionally, Evangelism Marketing costs less because you aren’t fighting to get attention with offers that are thrown in the trash. The friend tell the potential customer what they want to hear, when they want to hear it in the way they want to hear it. Evangelism Marketing targets on levels not possible with any other approach and get better results because of it.
As you can imagine all the rules are different when using Evangelism Marketing. Using the OutCompete Predictive Innovation Method and 10 years of research, I’ve learned what makes a complete and effective Evangelism Marketing campaign. Get up and running fast with this action-packed one day workshop. I hope to see you there.
Find out more about Evangelism Marketing Workshop
What Makes an Innovation System Complete?
Innovation is more than creativity, it requires 7 steps and each step must satisfy 7 criteria. This video introduces the steps and criteria. In future posts I’ll explore some of the steps and criteria.
For a free 19 page report detailing the criteria contact me and ask for, “What Makes an Innovation System Complete”.
