WARNING:  If you are easily offended skip this post.

More than half — 56% to be precise — of women feel that their household pets are more affectionate than their human partners, and 45% find the pets more physically attractive.*

I believe I am ahead of Oprah, Phil and The View on this one. Apparently, the term ‘desperate housewives’ has deeper meaning, far beyond the frothy TV show.

Humor or, depending on your perspective, fear aside, I link this to the subject of the two prior posts, as the end to my little presentation on ‘selling by psyche.’

You see, the bottom line of the human experience and the human psyche is restless dissatisfaction, the vague, always there feeling that there must be something better just down the road, over the next hill, in the home diagonally across the street, in someone else’s marriage, bedroom, corporate boardroom.

Presumably this is genetic, hard-wired, from the beginning. All progress has come from such dissatisfaction. Without it, caves and candles and everybody thinking, “what’s wrong with this?”.

The only reason there’s a stapler on your desk is somebody got fed up with folding corners together. But the price of all human progress is, apparently, unrelenting human dissatisfaction. Anybody who says God lacks a sense of humor just isn’t paying attention.

What motivates all action, all buying action, is, at foundation, such dissatisfaction.

From an advertising, marketing and selling standpoint, I am about to risk a very vivid but very ‘adult language’ analogy . If you are easily offended, you might stop reading now. However, the analogy seems especially appropriate given this post’s title.

As analogy, the G-Spot. There is that spot, if stimulated, that produces very predictable response. If really stimulated, it suspends all thought, common sense, reason, and unleashes a totally visceral, physical, emotional response. (My private phone number is…)

Well, think of the D-Spot located elsewhere, in the brain. D for Dissatisfaction. In advertising, marketing and selling, you want to locate that D-Spot in the prospect’s brain (which may very well be a simpler task than locating that other spot) and stimulate it until the prospect is in seizure, back arched, every muscle taut, eyes rolled back, breathing in gasps, drenched in sweat, desperate for release. Then present your, uh, solution.

* from BizRate Research, ‘Pets & Women.’

I want to share a discovery I just made from well over a century ago and how the simple rules still apply today.

I recently got some reprints of a newspaper from the Civil War era. In its advertising section, I found an ad selling a book on how to meet and marry your ideal mate, a home study course to learn to play the piano at home, an ad for goop to grow hair, an ad for breast enlargement padded bras and corsets, an ad for a tonic that gives you energy, and an ad recruiting sales agents for a line of Union pins – “everyone will want one.” The best ad offered its booklet “free, for $2.00.”

I repeat: during the Civil War.

Who was it? – Coolidge? – who said “The business of America is business.” The one certain thing is commerce never stops, so advertising, marketing and sales never stop. Other kinds of jobs, careers and business skills may come, go, die; there are few buggy whip manufacturers left, few typesetting businesses. But there will also be salespeople, always be direct marketers and direct marketing. Different media perhaps. Same game. THE evergreen, ever-valuable skill is to put words together in a way that motivates people to buy things.

And peoples’ fundamental motivations for buying things fortunately do not change either.

People want to know how to do things, mostly to improve their lives, entertain themselves, impress others, save money or make money. People want to be attractive to others, to influence others, to impress others; to be the life of the party, the envy of the neighborhood, the leader of the pack. They want to feel good (better), emotionally and physically.

They want to know what others know that they don’t even if they are using little of what they already know. They want to get what they don’t have, get whatever’s new, even if what is old, that they already own, that fulfills the same purpose perfectly sits unused in cupboard, closet or garage.

They want to go where they aren’t, even if where they are is just fine, and they haven’t yet explored or taken advantage of the things in their own neighborhood. They want a magic potion or pill, a way to make money without work, a simple solution to a complex problem. We aren’t, after all, all that complicated.

We like to think we have evolved from primitive caveman to sophisticated, complicated creatures*.

But we remain easily mesmerized by bright shiny objects. And Robert Collier’s sales copy works just fine today.

*Dr. Laura has now famously advised women: “Offer him sex. If he’s not interested, make him a sandwich. He’ll be happy.”

Let’s continue our discussion on fame and fortune and the easiest ways for you to have both.

I find it kind of funny when people see, but don’t model; when they say they want my kind of success and wealth and autonomy, but then don’t emulate the visible strategies that made and make it possible or aren’t willing to do the work.

Happens all the time, though. Envy is pointless. Modeling is extremely useful.

Almost everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I’ve observed others who had some piece of success I wanted doing it.

At the time I first encountered Jerry Buchanan, he had some things I envied and wanted: a following, making a good living as a writer, people seeking him out and paying him for advice. So I paid attention to what he was doing

One of those things was a newsletter. Around the same time, I took note of Gary Halbert’s success and the fact that he wrote and published his own newsletter. So I started my own newsletter.

I can assure you, the most certain path for an “ordinary Joe” to become both a sought after expert and a celebrity to a target group is by writing and publishing….newsletter, books, in some cases “white papers” or reports.

If you were going to model me, you would observe a number of things about my writing and publishing. For example, I frequently contribute a chapter to others’ anthology books. I did it in 1978, in Dottie Walters’ anthologies, and, by the way, got one of my first fee-paid speaking gigs as a result.

I’ve got a chapter in Linda Forsythe’s ‘Walking With The Wise Real Estate Investor’ (along with Ron LeGrand, Jeff Kaller and Donald Trump.) I made it possible for a lot of my clients, Platinum Members, etc. to participate in books with me. Some did, some who should didn’t. They don’t get it. They see what I do, but don’t see the lesson.

Another example, you would see I get myself mentioned in a lot of peoples’ books. I provide a lot of free articles for others’ newsletters and web sites.

I pay a publicity guy to get chapters of my books printed as articles in magazines. I write and get published “real” books; I self-publish other books; I self-publish ‘viral’ books for others to buy in bulk and give away, like ‘Farting Cat.’ And, of course, I write newsletters.

You ought not make any assumptions that I am on an ego trip, insane or stupid. I’m smart, sane, and care very little about ego stroking.

So you should ponder why I do these things now, still, and have done them for nearly 30 years. And you should emulate me, on either a global, national, niche or local scale as your circumstances and aspirations warrant.