Henry David Thoreau, the American essayist, poet, and philosopher once wrote:
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
“For books are not to teach us how to live,” writes Frederic Gros in his book A Philosophy of Walking, “but to make us want to live, to live differently: to find in ourselves the possibility of life, its principle.”
Both Thoreau and Gros argue that true, valuable, and insightful books can only be written when combined with lots and lots of walking.
True walking.
Not the kind you do when you’re out shopping, rushing to get to the train station, or going to the hairdresser around the corner.
True walking is when you’re out in nature without a destination or goal to achieve, with no purpose whatsoever. It’s just you, Mother Nature, and your thoughts. Often for hours on end—even though it’ll only feel like a few minutes at most after you’re done. That’s how time functions when out in the open, connected to the world around you, and without a care in your mind; the flow gets all tangled up and you have no idea how many seconds, minutes, or even hours have passed.
“What’s the point of telling me all this?” you might ask.
Well, it’s simple really.
First, it might be a worthwhile idea to go on more walks, experience life more clearly, and inspire you to write your next masterpiece.
Second, and this is where today’s marketing lesson comes in, the first Thoreau quote I shared helps you answer the question of “What problem does an author solve?”.
To clarify what I mean, take a look at the following quote by famous comic book writer, publisher, and producer, Stan Lee, who single-handedly grew one of the biggest multimedia enterprises to date:
===
“Entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.”
===
Or in other words, you’re helping people want to live (and live differently).
You can prove this to yourself by looking at people’s expenditures during difficult economic times, filled with doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety. You’d expect people to start saving more and only spending their hard-earned money on basic needs for survival such as food, shelter, hygiene, and transportation.
Instead what you’ll find is, yes people will spend more of their budget on those things (relatively speaking), yet they’ll also start spending a lot more money on entertainment as well.
After all, what good is mere survival without the will to live?
Now, you might nod your head while reading this and think “okay that’s cool”, but not so fast. Because this is truly important news for you to keep in mind as long as you work in the entertainment industry—which, at this point, almost everyone does to a certain extent.
Why?
Because that’s the key to all your marketing!
The big question people always have is “what can you do for me?”, no matter if they’re buying new clothes, booking a vacation, taking a language course, or shopping for new books in their local Barnes & Noble.
You simply cannot succeed in your marketing endeavor if you’re not aware of ‘what you can do for them’, or in other words, ‘what problem you’re solving’—a question that is a lot easier to answer in non-entertainment-related markets.
Speaking of marketing…
I’ve been busy working on a paid ad course, specifically for independent creatives active in the entertainment industry, which will help you create profitable ads, built upon age-old direct marketing knowledge, in such a simple and streamlined way that you don’t have to waste years of your life getting a PhD in advertising, so you have more to do what you love most.
It’s not quite here yet, but it will be soon…
So keep an eye out for that.