Explorations in Business - Part 6 of ?

Get customers. Satisfy them. Those are the two key steps in business. I have to figure out how to do both of those. Today I'm going to try to bring a lot of information together and find out which way I'm presenting this and getting customers.


I've found as I've been trying to design this as a system that I don't like it. I want it to be personal, not systematized. Even though this is going to be complex in a number of ways, eventually I need to end up with some simple strategies and tactics. This is from "Systemantics" by John Gall.

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A Complex System That Works Is Invariably Found To Have Evolved From A Simple System That Worked.

A Complex System Designed From Scratch Never Works And Cannot Be Made To Work. You Have To Start Over, Beginning With A Working Simple System.

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The first principle of systems design is "Do It Without A System If You Can." I don't think I can do that because I want to be able to somewhat consistently connect with new and old customers and help them on a repeated basis. It's true that "Many Functions Are Intrinsically Unsuited To The Systems Approach." And I think that rewiring the brain for significant transformation in how you perceive pain may fall into that category, but I'm hoping some simple systems will be able to handle it.

Three last insights from "Systemantics".

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A SYSTEM IS NO BETTER THAN ITS SENSORY ORGANS.

SYSTEMS ALIGNED WITH HUMAN MOTIVATIONAL VECTORS WILL SOMETIMES WORK.

LOOSE SYSTEMS LAST LONGER AND WORK BETTER.

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I know, I also don't like that they're in all-caps.

I will be point on everything in the business. I will talk directly to all of the customers, which means I will be the sensory organ. Hopefully gaining the ability to function despite pain aligns with human motivations. And, I think it will be a pretty loose system.

It's easy for health and disease to become systematized, but it doesn't work. A good example is the medical industry in the United States, it's rough. Thomas Jefferson seems to have seen that coming a couple of hundred years ago.

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"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now."

From "Notes on the State of Virginia", 1787.

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The great psychologist Viktor Frankl talked about the impersonal nature of doctors. Now, I'm neither a doctor, nor am I in the medical industry. I'm closer to hating doctors than liking them, and respect almost all non-criminal professions more. But I am talking about health.

Health is a personal and important thing. Most people's health in the United States is bad, Jefferson explained why in one sentence. There are a lot of aspects needed to help with that, but one of them is that people should be humanized rather than systematized. It should be personal rather than impersonal.

That's a hard thing to do. The psychologist Stanley Milgram did experiments to see if people would torture other people when told to by an authority figure. The general conclusion, yes. Most people will torture someone when told to. But, there's more to it than that. If the authority figure is taking the responsibility for the action then significantly more people will. If that responsibility is placed on the shoulders of the individual then less people will.

In large organizations and systems, like everywhere in the medical industry, all of the people are just small cogs in a small wheel, that's in a larger wheel, that's in a machine, which is part of broken factory called the healthcare system. And that's exactly what it feels like. I would rather go to a vet than a doctor, you get more humane treatment. I really want to avoid that cog feeling, which is why I think I kind of sputter out in my action when I start thinking about how to systematize the business.

By the way, when the medical people aren't treating you like a human and you feel like a broken gasket that they would rather throw away than help, it's because they aren't responsible for anything that happens to you, they don't have authority, you don't matter to them, you're just a number and a name in a computer, a cog talking to a cog. You aren't you, you're "patient." They aren't them, they're "doctor." That person is in what's called an agentic state. It's an amoral state. I don't want anyone in an agentic state.

If I'm not going in the direction, which direction am I going in? I want to create the opportunity for transformation, the types of transformations that I've experienced. I was non-functional. Now I'm functional. That's cool. It's not like rewiring my brain through meditation to manage my pain was the entire solution, but it was a major part. I'm just trying to give that part to other people. It's like human alchemy.

I want to help people with similar problems to mine in the same way that I was able to change. This specific part is a change that comes from within, I want to help people transform from within. It's like the ancient shaman. The shaman was a wounded healer, and so am I.

In the book "Prophetic Charisma" by Len Oakes he talks about preaching the negative revelation, and then the positive revelation. What could this look like in my case? I want to try to keep things specific and shorter, because my story can easily grow.

Pain, the focus is on specific incidents of pain. So...

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When I was 13 I had a shoulder injury. I was 13, I didn't know how serious it was. So, I didn't go to the hospital right away. I played the rest of the football season, then a basketball season, then a wrestling season. The shoulder never stopped throbbing. Finally, when I couldn't throw a baseball, I went to the hospital and found that I had broken my collar bone and had some stretching and tearing of connective tissue. I opted out of the surgery, but took painkillers. The more painkillers you take the more you need. At one point when I was 17 I took a 30 day supply of Vicodin in 3 days. That's when I realized it might be a problem. So, I just stopped taking painkillers. I didn't take Advil, or Tylenol, or Aspirin, or Ibuprofen, or anything for almost 10 years.

Then, I had a misadventure in Africa. I was vomiting blood and told I was going to die. I survived, but things weren't right. It took me 6 months of antibiotic treatments to beat the bacteria, and then I things still weren't right. A chiropractor friend of mine found that I had major spinal deformities, and one of the bones had slid into my brainstem causing problems with everything, including my heart, my memory, and an immense amount of pain radiating out from the base of my skull to my entire body. I did a lot of experiments to find ways to improve and I found some answers. Another chiropractor pushed the bone out of my brainstem. But, pain was still an issue. I was still sensitive to light and sound. At one point I laid down in either my bed or on the couch for two months. Usually laying down until you get better works when you're sick, but not always.

The doctors kept offering me painkillers, and I kept saying no. "No! I don't want painkillers, I want to fix the problem!" The doctors wouldn't listen, and the doctors didn't care. I finally broke down and decided to get the painkillers. I told them I just wanted the pain to go away for a little while so I could think straight. They gave me two injections, one in each buttcheek. They guaranteed me that my pain would go away. It didn't. It didn't seem to do anything, until I was driving home. I couldn't stay in my lane, so the drugs were effecting me, they just weren't helping with the pain.

Months later, after I had made some health improvements, I decided to take a risk. I went to a 10 day silent meditation retreat to see if that could help me with the pain. I tried to meditate for 10 hours a day for two days. My mind couldn't not focus on the pain. I couldn't do it right. I went and talked to the monk in a one-on-one. He told me to focus on the pain. To explore it. To feel it. I told him I didn't know if I could do that, it was so intense. He didn't flinch and said "It will get worse, then it will get better." For hours I sat there, tears streaming down my face. I wasn't sobbing, which was good because that would've hurt my head, but the tears flowed like a facet had been left on. Then, something changed. The rewiring of my brain had started, I could still feel the bones in my neck that were out of place, but it was different.

Instead of lights and buzzers going off in my head and radiating out to the rest of my body, I could feel what was wrong but still think about other things, focus on other things. It no longer pulled my attention away at any moment, it was no longer stopping me from functioning. I was in control again. With more practice my abilities became better. I even found that I didn't have to do it that often, just when I needed it. My ability to manage my pain and my health started to go hand-in-hand, to grow together. I could go for hikes again without the impact stopping me. I could go for long drives again without the bumps destroying me. Eventually I started riding a motorcycle again. And a key to all of that was rewiring my perception of pain through meditation.

I still feel the pain. I still have a headache that started in December of 2015. And it's important for me to feel the pain. I need to know when things are wrong because if the bones in my neck our out of place for a couple of days I will start to have cognitive declines. I need to be aware of that. But, I don't need lights and buzzers going off about it. I can be aware that something is wrong without being distracted by it, without being sidelined in life by it. A life controlled by pain is no life at all. Pain shouldn't manage people, people should manage pain. That's what I do, and that's what I can show you how to do.

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The timeline in there is a little off so I will need to go back through it, but it seems like a good start.

Next? In "The Spellbinders" by Ann Ruth Willner she talks about what's needed to a charismatic leader, on the leader and follower sides of the equation. Charismatic leaders are the ones that transform people from within, so it's applicable.

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1. There needs to be a crisis. Whatever happened to the person to cause the chronic pain.
2. They need to be in distress. The chronic pain.
3. There needs to be a leader. That's me.
4. And the leader needs to offer deliverance. That's changing the perception of pain through meditation to restore life function.

1. The leader needs to be related to a myth from the culture. That's a hard one. The wounded healer, maybe. Nope. I will have to think about that more. Who was wounded, and healed, and then healed others? I don't know off-hand. If you have good ideas send them to me.
2. The leader needs to have a feat. I joined the high IQ society Mensa after having brain damage and recovering. I wrestled alligators a few months ago. Those are pretty good I think.
3. The leader needs to have a special aura. I've been told I possess such.
4. The leader needs to be skilled in rhetoric. I've given a few speeches.

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Gall, Oakes, and Willner are weird sources for business information. But, it's the type of stuff that I like, and I think it's more powerful than most business information. Tomorrow I'll dive into business advice from business people. Then, I'll basically have my messaging put together. After that, I put it into the website. Finally, I use the messaging to sell.

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You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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