The Mindset Conundrum
Headspace
Unless you have been living under a stone in some Amazon rain forest somewhere, people are BUSY these days. And with busy lifestyles come time management, energy management, mental attitude management, social engagement management...and the list goes on. The thing is that you only have so many hours in every day to devote to one topic, so making it count is paramount. And to find that sort of focus you have to manage one thing and one thing alone, your headspace.
So that begs the question "what is 'headspace'?". By definition headspace is a person's state of mind or mindset. That's it. It is how you think about things, situations, yourself, your worldview so to speak. Are you a pessimist, an optimist, a realist, an idealist, or an opportunist? There are lots of other "ists" out there, but I want to call your attention to those in particular as they relate to online marketing. It is important to understand your audience if you ever want them to buy from you and it also helps you to understand your own mindset because it will help you better understand how you look at things when it comes to marketing.
The Pessimist
Being a pessimist is not all about being negative. It has more in common with being a realist than anything else. But the main difference is that a pessimist is preloading the expected outcome with failure. The saving grace of a pessimist is that they generally have experience to bring to the table when they declare the verdict. When it comes to online marketing those folks are hard to sell to. The upside is that they can make the most vocal supporters once they buy into a system and get some success under their belts using that system.
The Optimist
The optimist is always looking thru rose colored glasses and the world is a great place to live...even if that happens to be in famine zone littered with bodies of the dead. Kidding, but really they are almost always looking at the brighter side of things and that can leave them open to being scammed. The idea that someone would take advantage of them is unthinkable and not in their worldview. That of course is simply untrue. The upside of the optimist is that they can make for great people to have around on your list, forum or membership site when things get slow and the pessimists start complaining about things not going their way. They can chime in and show them the bright side.
The Realist
The realist is the person that takes things as they are, not as they wish them to be. This is the solid sort of person that hammers away, day in and day out testing a single approach to marketing and masters it when it shows it is worth their time. There are very few realist in online marketing, but the ones that there are out there often are the successful ones because of the tenacity they have finding and perfecting a system, method or approach to making money online. They make some of the best people to have in your forums, membership sites and social media groups. Why? They usually can contribute numbers, case studies, and testimonials to a particular system, method or approach because they put in the hours, days and weeks to see it pan out.
The Idealist
The idealist is the person who looks at things they way they should/could be but presently aren't. There is an upside to having these folks around and that is they are the ones who can come up with crazy ideas, out of the box thinking, and pure nonsense that gets conversations started. By being able to say "what if we did it this way" has lead to some of the greatest advancements on this planet, so I think it is fair to say they are some of the best drivers of change. Notice I didn't say improvement, that is not their job. They job in life is to drive the "what ifs" and the other folks can see if it works.
The Opportunist
The opportunist is the one what looks at all the other peoples input and wonders how it can be used to make a buck, improve what they have already to increase efficiency etc. This is the person who looks at what the pessimist is doing or saying and thinks "if that is never going to work, how can it be changed to make it work?". They look at the optimist and think "Sure things are good and that makes me happy. How can being happy make me more money, or give me longer or a better life, or how does making me happy increase my efficiency?". The opportunist takes what the realist has said and plugs that data into one of his or her own systems to see if it will work the same in their business model. They also take the idealist input into account to see what is possible given the current level of technology or platforms and then thinks about the ways in which it can be combined with the other mentalities to create a massive increase in the bottom line.
The Melting Pot
In the end if you can identify with any of these personalities then you know that given your own nature that you can use the view points of the others to increase your opportunities to find success. Whether that is in a group setting, hiring them as a VA (virtual assistant), or collaborate with them individually, you can see things from a perspective that is not your own and that means you can generate results that are not only different, but can also be very rewarding.
Recent Comments
2
Audiences are of all different types. I'm sure that there are many more types of mindset.
I just took a survey to help people understand how they view business. Their classifications were Rainmaker, Conductor and Expert. These were made of 10 additional personality types.
The point is that your audience is diverse and everyone is unique in how they view the world.
Exactly true. Knowing yourself and worldview is the first step in gaining mastery over your online marketing. Knowing others is the final step in that pathway to success.