I’ve been reading a bit about Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers.
Dell was quite a precocious kid.
For example, in a bid to get into business early, he applied to take the high school equivalency exam at age 8.
In his teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.
He then started a business selling upgrade kits for personal computers. In May 1984, he incorporated this business as “Dell Computer Corporation.”
In July of that same year, the company’s first financial statement showed a profit of $200,000. Dell used this statement to convince his parents it was ok for him to drop out of college. He was 19 at the time.
Over the years, Dell kept growing Dell Computers, getting it to the position of the largest manufacturer of PC’s in the world.
He also started MSD Capital (MSD being his initials), an investment firm to manage his own wealth.
As of today, after taking Dell (the company) private and then public again, Michael Dell’s net worth is estimated at $27 billion, $17 billion of which comes from his stake in Dell Computers and the rest from his other investments.
All of which raises the question, what have you been doing with your life?
After all, Michael Dell was just a kid from Houston, born to a solidly middle-class family. And look at what he’s done.
Seriously though, I hope all this talk of the hyper-competent Michael Dell has managed to depress you a bit.
After all, I wanted to illustrate an important point. It’s something I read in Maxwell Maltz’s self-help tome Psycho-Cybernetics. Says Dr. Maltz:
“An inferiority complex can be made to order. All you need to do is set up a norm or average, then convince your subject he does not measure up.”
And you know, once you’ve got somebody feeling inferior, you can then sell them your product as a cure for that lousy feeling they have.
You might think this is a terribly cynical way of doing marketing.
You might also decide it’s not for you.
And that’s a perfectly legit stance. On the other hand, you could take the attitude of Brian Kurtz, former VP at the direct marketing behemoth Boardroom. It’s something Brian calls “congruent marketing”:
“Think about how valuable the product or service you are selling is to your audience and how much you believe that getting it into as many hands as possible is a game changer for them… and that you have almost a moral responsibility on your part to get it to them.”
In this view, it can be ok to disturb, shock, or hype up people with your marketing, as long as what you’re selling is worth it to them. Speaking of which:
If you need help growing your business through some seemingly interesting, emotionally disturbing copy, you might find some good ideas inside of my upcoming book on email marketing. The book isn’t out yet — but if you sign up, you can get a free copy when I do finish it. Here’s where to do that: