Part 9: “In Search Of Heroes Book 1″ What is your definition of heroism? by Ralph Zuranski
Perry Marshall: I guess it’s doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. That suggests that there are principles that are above and beyond the immediate concerns of safety or expediency.
Usually the word “hero” refers to someone who saved someone’s life. Such as the men at Pearl Harbor who helped others get out of the boat and got stuck there and drowned. That is what heroism is.
In today’s business I think there is a very pervasive culture in the marketing world that says that whatever B.S. you have to make up to get the transaction done is okay, and even a more subtle belief that truth itself is a very relative thing. ‘What is true for you is not true for me.’
So what you end up with is you have a lot of people who really don’t have any appreciation for the Golden Rule and don’t really treat customers the way they would want to be treated. It makes people cynical and untrusting.
I think the biggest thing that anybody in the marketing profession deals with is cynicism and distrust.
We have all this stuff about Deep Throat in the news today, right? 30 years ago Richard Nixon lied to the American public and everybody was just shocked. Now you have Bill Clinton lying about the Lewinsky thing.
You have the Bush administration obviously fabricating things to get us into the Iraqi war. I’m not going to get into the politics of any of this, but nobody is particularly shocked or surprised today if somebody is lying to them.
So it creates this cynicism inflation in the world that becomes harder and harder to overcome. If you make things up and couch them in very believable language in order to overcome somebody’s skepticism, then when they find out the truth, all you have done is you have contributed to cynicism inflation. You have made it harder for them to believe anything you say later.
On the other hand, if you are exceptionally truthful about things then your customers over time will discover what is true of you and they will believe you when they don’t believe others. That’s kind of a long answer to a short question but I think it is important.
It’s interesting you are asking me all this stuff because these topics rarely come up. Everybody wants to talk about tricks and techniques and clever ways of saying things and clever ways of getting internet traffic.
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Channing: I just spoke to my wife about that this morning; because I told her I was going to be doing this interview. She said, and we agreed, it’s the people that make a difference in one person’s life.
If I can make a difference in my neighbor’s life that morning or that afternoon, maybe once a day and bring somebody up that’s been down or helped somebody, like I know you are doing with your family, that’s a hero.
To me, if I can change one life, I don’t know who quoted this before, but it’s a quote from somewhere. ‘If you can change one person’s life, and make them happy, make them feel better about themselves or help them in any other way, you’ve actually helped humanity itself.’ That’s my definition of heroism, helping one person at a time.