Internet Marketing and Anthropology
While watching the Nanny Diaries I came across this little nugget of knowledge: The biggest problem for any anthropologist studying a particular sociological model is that being exposed to this segmented group of people eventually leads to a total assimilation with them and the only way to stop this process is to immediately remove yourself from that environment.
Simply put, the environment you place yourself in shapes who you will become.
Listen to this.
I was doing quite well before I came to America. My business was generating OK money and I was wearing nice suit and a long black cashmere coat with a silk scarf. I had never done manual labor and I wasn’t planning on trying.
When my country’s economy went belly up, I lost everything and came to the United States to find a new beginning.
I came here without any money and without knowing anybody and decided to start from construction kind of work.
My environment all of a sudden changed: from business-development to vinyl siding installation, from cashmere coat to Carhart overall, from a good food to McDonald’s, from sedans to pickup trucks, from my friends with college degrees, clean clothing and intact teeth to a bunch of stinky beat-up dentally-challenged rednecks.
At first it felt awkward and in some sense entertaining, but then I started noticing that my entire system of values started to change: good food would mean Burger King instead of McDonald’s, good clothing would mean Carhart instead of Wal-Mart, good car would mean an old pickup truck with a few hundreds miles on it that you can haul a pile of tools in instead of new shiny sedan (how are you going to put an air compressor in there?)
It didn’t even bother me to wear bandanas in public and to admit that I only made $10 an hour!
Everyday life has a way of numbing you to the point where you don’t see that there’s anything wrong.
It took years of swinging hammers and shifting equipment before I realized I wanted more (clean clothes, clean cars, good food,) longer to actually pull myself out of that environment.
Now, just a few months after I left my Carharts behind for business casual clothes, I don’t eat whoppers and I don’t go crazy over the Lowes’ sale flyer.
If I had told those guys I used to work with my plans to become a successful Internet marketer or my dream of owning my own home-based business, how do you think they would have reacted? Seriously, I would have sounded crazy.
Was it hard to drag myself back up out of the mud? Yes, it was.
Was it worth it? Absolutely!
One more time: Being exposed to a segmented group of people eventually leads to a total assimilation with them and the only way to stop this process is to immediately remove yourself from that environment.
What is it that you do?
Filed under: Home Based Business