The Best of All Marketing Strategies

I discovered the best of all marketing strategies quite by accident!

In order to put this into perspective, however, I need to get a running start.

In 1967, Mary and I decided to attend a local Billy Graham crusade. I don't know why we were there, or how we got there. I don't even remember who invited us!

I do remember being amazed at the thousands of people in attendance that night, and the simple power of Billy's invitation. All of a sudden, Mary and I both were standing at the front of the auditorium, accepting his invitation to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Since then, our journey of faith has taken us through many trials and tribulations, many victories and successes.

But (don't you just hate it when someone says "but"?), although I had accepted Him as Savior, I had a much tougher and longer time accepting Him as Lord!

My personality style (if you haven't already figured it out) is Driver, Type A Plus Ultra! I've written elsewhere about the DISC personality analysis. If you haven't taken yours, you can do it online by Googling DISC.

As a Driver, I was "large, and in charge"! I just knew that with the right marketing strategies, and (best of all) enough persistence and hard work, I could accomplish anything.

Well, not quite!

Over time, my understanding of my faith and my relationship to Him deepened and broadened to the point where I turned to Him daily for guidance. In each of my businesses I prayed that He would assist me in my work, help me resolve problems, find the marketing strategies that worked best of all, and bless me with success and to help me to be a blessing to others. In each of these businesses, it always seemed to be MY idea! But when I started my professional public speaking career in March of 2006, it was an entirely different matter! This new career was definitely NOT my idea!

It's true that I was looking into a number of opportunities that might follow the eventual sale of my windshield repair business. And I knew that whatever it was, I was now equipped with the best of all marketing strategies, gained by trial and error through previous experience, to make that business succeed.

But I was unprepared for the impact a little book entitled "Half Time" would have on my future. The author, Bob Buford, wrote this book in 1994 about his own journey "from success to significance", as he put it. In that book, before my very eyes, was the best of all marketing strategies!

When I got to Chapter Five, he was describing precisely the same experience that I was going through!

Listen to what Buford says:

"In my hour of deepest need, grace led me to an atheist...he did not believe in God, but I can testify that - at least in my life - God worked unmistakably through him.

"What should I do [now]? How could I be most useful? Where should I invest my own talents, time and treasure? What are the values that give purpose to my life? Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?

"He asked me a simple and penetrating question: What's in your box?

"No one had ever put such a significant question to me so directly. After a few minutes (which seemed like hours), I said, "Well, if it has to be [between God and mammon], I'll put Jesus Christ in my box!"

I concluded the same thing: this time it would be God's business I would be about, and not my business with Him as a sometimes Helper. Simply put, this is the best of all marketing strategies: to let Him guide me by putting it all into His hands!

It all made sense!

All of my life experiences, certainly an eclectic collection of successes and failures, of "peaks" and "valleys", of experimenting with various marketing strategies to find the best of them all, were now "inventory"! These marketing strategies that I had proven to work would now be what I could now draw on to help other people going through the same thing, or to help them to sidestep the most difficult parts (trial and error) altogether.

And so I embarked on my current journey.

Within a week of using this "best of all marketing strategies" by announcing publicly that I was now in God's speaking business, amazing and otherwise utterly unexplainable events began to happen.

Let me relate just one of them to you. There were dozens, and they continue to occur nearly on a daily basis!

It was Friday, just a few days after that announcement, and I was having lunch with my son Russ. He is the one who bought the investment company from me that had been built to the $15 million level using many of these same marketing strategies.

My cell phone rang.

It was George! I hadn't seen or talked with George for years. He lived in Denver now, and we'd kind of lost touch.

Here is the conversation:

"Hello, this is Bob."

"Hi, Bob, this is George!"

"Hi, George! What a nice surprise! I haven't heard from you for years!"

"Things are going just great. Say, I know you're busy with other things and I know this is a busy time of the year for your windshield repair business and all, but I wanted to know if you would like to speak[!] at our CHEC [Christian Home Educators of Colorado] conference in Denver in April. There will be about 500 young people there, and..."

"Of course, George! I'd be glad to!"

"Wait! I know you're busy with your work and all..."

"George, there's no way you could have known this, but just last week I started a new business, public speaking, and [using the best of all marketing strategies] I've committed it to Him! And here you are!"

"(Laughter) And here I am!"

And so that's what happened. If you take that single experience and multiply it by 10 or 20 or 100, you'll begin to see the power of the best of all marketing strategies. It continues to happen even today!

Here it is: the single most effective marketing strategy I've ever used is to follow Proverbs 16:3:

"Commit your plans to the Lord, and they will succeed."

This best of all marketing strategies is like having a tail wind driving the whole marketing process!

I know about tail winds!

I ride a bike nearly every day, even in winter. Colorado Springs gets 285 days of sunshine a year and, believe me, I take advantage of it!

Recently I planned a 30-mile ride down to Florence and back. I figured it would take me about two hours or so, if I averaged 15 mph on the bike.

However, on this particular day I had failed to take into account a 35 mph wind in my face on the way down to Florence. After an hour's riding, I had covered less than 9 miles!

This was getting out of hand! At that rate it would take almost all of 2 hours just to get to Florence, and I'd still have 15 miles to ride to get back home!

So I turned around.

And again I forgot about the wind, which was now at my back!

I covered the 9 miles back in less than 20 minutes!

Talk about a tailwind speeding things along! It was great! And so it is with this "best of all" marketing strategies.

Of course I am certainly not the first or the only person to have discovered this. It's just that this is the first time in my life where I have first given my business to the Lord, and then followed His leading entirely.

For example, Scottish writer and mountaineer W. H. Murray said this about his effort to climb the Himalayas:

"We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

What W. H. Murray might have said, was that this "genious, power and magic" were God's way of answering the question: what is the best of all marketing strategies?

In the simplest possible terms, the best of all marketing strategies is this: give it to Him.

I have no way of knowing where you are on your spiritual journey. All I know for sure - all that I can tell you - is that if you utilize this best of all marketing strategies that I've ever found, He will honor those who honor Him (I Samuel 2:30). Take me from the Best of All Marketing Strategies to the Home Page