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Thumb-Sucking Dependence
By Dan Kennedy
HERE'S GOOD NEWS FOR SOME OF US. (I am about to share an "inside secret" that could make you very rich, very, very fast. It admittedly reflects a cynical (although accurate) assessment of the American* public.) A few years back around the time of Mother's Day, THE TODAY SHOW featured a story on "mother-daughter bonding boot camp", a group therapy business, where mother-daughter pairs pay to go and share stories, light candles, play games and work out their angst with 100 or so other mother-daughter pairs. Seriously. The last night they roast marshmallows; the final morning they light candles and say one meaningful word to each other.
The same day CNN carried a story about the newest, most pathetic trend: parents, predominately mothers, going with their college age and college grad children to their job interviews, waiting in the waiting rooms or, when possible even going into the interview with them and answering questions on their behalf. I have previously written elsewhere about the popularity in particularly affluent communities of "baby sleep coaches" who camp out in the home to "coach" mommies on getting their babies to sleep. "Thumb-sucking dependency" (the polar opposite of the virtue I celebrate: self-reliance) isn't new in America. It's just increasingly dominant.
It started its rise in the 60's and hasn't slowed. In the 70's, when I asked Werner Erhard to sum up his personal growth thing, EST, he said "We preach independence but breed dependence." In the 80's, we chose a President for his ability to "feel our pain" rather than his competence, courage or integrity. Years back I wrote about Hollywood's "Food Cop," paid big fees by famous dependent dysfunctionals to make surprise raids on their homes and remove all the junk food.
So it's not new. But it is on a meteoric rise, expanding from top to bottom in business and personal life....peoples' desperate desire to be parented, taken care of, told what to do but mostly have everything done for them; peoples' eagerness to anoint others as experts in every imaginable category of need, including new categories of expertise dreamt up daily. And the experts need not be very expert: the immensely popular TV star, bestselling author, Martha-on-the-make cooking expert Rachel Ray admits she has no culinary training, can't bake, uses pre-prepared foods, her mother's recipes (she's a very powerful example of niche-to-broad and self-appointment, but those are topics for another time).
For those of us in information marketing businesses; how-to publishing, seminars, coaching, consulting; gurus, seers, surrogate parents...this is all very good news. Most of us understand it; although still underestimate its breadth and depth. But EVERY MARKETER needs to pay closer attention and strive to capitalize on this.
Financial advisors, doctors, the application is obvious - yet most are still thinking in tired, traditional terms of selling products and services rather than selling themselves as the guru and surrogate parent who will take over that part of the client's/patient's life completely, relieve them of responsibility, give them a blankie. For others, the application is not so obvious and must be thunk, thunk, thunk and thunk about until it can be found or manufactured. Consider the enormous success of e-harmony.com. Its authority, its expertise and the validity of its "compatibility test" is accepted thanks only to well-financed, persistent advertising and the public's desperate desire to abdicate responsibility for finding and choosing mates.
The national impulse now - from slothful youth to aging boomers - to any need is NOT to go out and hunt and assemble information, marshal resources, investigate, become knowledgeable and empowered to make good decisions and manage one's own affairs. The national impulse in response to each and every need is to find someone to step in and relieve responsibility, make initiative unnecessary.
From a societal standpoint, it will be the eventual collapse of the American empire, rotting away from within, finally dying with merely a whimper. As an American eager to be proud of my country, I find it embarrassing. From a personal standpoint, it is temptation more deadly than alcohol, drugs, etc. that you should refuse to embrace on any level - if you aspire to success and prosperity. It is, above all else, what separates those of us making up the teeny percentage of the population who possess financial independence from the vast majority who do not; a truthful explanation for the separation you will never hear a single politician ever utter, even those who know it, because they are where EST was; it is in their self-interest to breed dependence; individual's' independence is threat to their interests. It is not a coincidence, incidentally, that the term is "financial independence." It's not the Da Vinci code. The two words tell you how to get it. From a marketing standpoint, as an entrepreneur and a marketer, it is up to you to thoroughly understand it, cater to it and capitalize on it. You can't do that by selling products or services as you've always sold them. Instead, the huge opportunity is in selling something else, summarized within this Lesson in just three words.
*As an aside, a nod to the nearly 20% of our Members not residing in the U.S.: it is my observation, from reading, anecdotal input, discussions with some of you, etc. that most of your countries do not share our unfortunate national impulse described here. However I'm not there to judge and you are, so you must draw your own conclusions about the extent to which you might apply this. From our own business standpoint, I expect the international percentage of our Membership to keep growing, representative of the greater willingness of entrepreneurs in other countries to invest time and money, accept responsibility, take initiative and even go to extremes to acquire information helpful in their endeavors.
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