Tomorrow is our permanent address
Wed, Mar 6, 2013
“I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it.” -- Marshall McLuhan
“The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” -- Marshall McLuhan
Marshal McLuhan is widely remembered as a media visionary, “an academic whose writings changed the way the world thought about the media and its influence.” [Reuters] (McLuhan died 31 years ago at the age of 69.) Despite the fact that the most influential publications in the world — Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, among others — clamoured to promote his ideas and to parse his aphorisms in their pages, “for quite a long time in North America he was considered the most overrated media guru of all time,” says B.W. Powe, a former student of McLuhan’s. In fact, his work was once described as “a hoax so gigantic that it shows every sign of becoming an international intellectual scandal.” But the unfolding of years since his death and, more than anything else, the frenetic expansion of the internet, are testimony to the fact that “McLuhan is still ahead of us.” Forty years ago (and remember, the internet has only been in existence for twenty years), McLuhan predicted the emergence of a global village of electronic connectivity which would at once be “as wide as the planet and as small as a little town where everybody is maliciously engaged in poking his nose into everybody else’s business.” With those few words, McLuhan effectively anticipated the ruthless phone-hacking culture that led disgraced media magnate Rupert Murdoch, whose “papers have always feasted on scandals like this, picking the bones of their victims” [New York Times] – to shut down his British tabloid News of the World.The Medium is the Message
McLuhan also coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, referring to the concept that the content of electronic media is insignificant; “it is the medium itself that has the greater impact on the environment. In other words, it wasn't what we were seeing on TV that was important; it was the fact that we were watching TV (and not doing other things) that altered our brains.” [Globe and Mail]How easily do you embrace new ideas?
Thinking about all these things, I want to focus on the irony that McLuhan was touted by some as over-rated and a hoax, and on the quotes I’ve referenced above: “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it” and “We look at the present through a rear view mirror, marching backwards into the future.” My question is, how easily do you embrace … really embrace … new ideas that have the ability to carry you into tomorrow without skeptically editing and discounting them because you have two feet still firmly planted in yesterday. Are you guilty of not “seeing” the solutions to whatever problems you’re having in your business right now because deep down, in your heart of hearts, you don’t really believe that a solution is possible? Let me make a prediction. There are some of you reading this right now who are just about to give up on my system. You engaged me in some capacity in the first place because you knew you needed some help and I made it easy for you to get on board. You came on some calls, listened (sort of) to what we taught you, and then dove back into the problems of your business (a seller complaining that their house isn’t receiving enough exposure, the frustration of finding good prospects to work with, the humiliation of tracking down and being rejected by yet another prospect) and your inside voice said to you that there really was no way out of this … that life is tough and business is tough and if you’re going to make a better living you have to face up to the reality that you’ll just have to work harder, put in more hours, give up more of you. By the time the next call came along, you rationalized to yourself that you really couldn’t afford to give up that time because you’re already way behind on everything you have to do to survive, and by the way, money is tight and even though you can run most of my ads for $25-$30 in your local paper (or even for free on Craiglist), twenty five dollars is still twenty five dollars, and better it sits in your bank account to help pay the bills. So in a nutshell, what happened is that you were struggling with some part of your business, you raised your hand and said ‘help me’, but you didn’t really believe that you could be helped so you failed to grab the life raft and are about to make the decision that you’ll go back to drowning. No real estate coach can help you if you give up.Making the decision to drown
McLuhan also said “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” So let me ask you this. Are you about to abandon ship because you’ve been riding as a passenger, secretly wishing that perhaps someone will step into your business and solve all the problems for you? If that’s how you’ve been approaching this program, perhaps it’s better that you exit at the next station because (sorry) you’re probably un-helpable. But if you’ve just got momentarily side-tracked by the day-to-day problems, and you really are prepared to be an active crew member who is truly willing to act and believe and embrace change, don’t give up on yourself. Before you click the delete button on a program that actually does have the capacity to drive you into the future, email me at craig@craigproctor.com and we’ll troubleshoot your specific situation and show you how you can go forward. Oh, and by the way, the phrase “tomorrow is your permanent address” is also from McLuhan. Are you ready to move in? P.S. You can test drive my ideas and systems absolutely free by signing up for Free Weekly Training which includes live weekly webinars, a monthly newsletter and priority invitations to free half day training events. This Free Weekly training will expose you to inexpensive and highly effective methods of lead generation (with no cold calling) -- what I call “Reverse Prospecting”, where qualified prospects actually hunt you down rather than the other way around, and then how to follow these leads through to maximum GCI via proprietary lead conversion and prospect presentation systems. This is the easiest way for you to find out with no risk or obligation what my system is all about and how it can help you profitably grow your real estate business and vastly improve your quality of life. JOIN MY FREE WEEKLY TRAINING PROGRAM HERE