“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.” -Pink Floyd

Q: Why are all popular movies orphan stories?

A: Cuz we’re ALL orphans, that’s why.

Of course you and I know we’re NOT all orphans, but….

Actually we still are.

In the Adam and Eve story, we get kicked out of the garden. Then we spend the rest of history trying to find our way back.

Superman was rocketed to earth by his scientist father, moments before planet Krypton’s destruction. Batman’s parents were killed by thugs in an alley while he watched. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz was raised by Aunt Em.

What makes a hero story?

-Hero’s parents get killed.

-Hero has no place to go.

-Hero has to fight from behind to earn respect in the world.

-Hero digs himself in so deep, he nearly dies. Then just when all hope is lost, an act of providence saves his sorry ass.

-Then at long last, he wins the day, gets the girl and is crowned king.

OK so what does this have to do with marketing?

Everybody – every single one of your customers – wants to either (A) live that story for themselves, or (B) if they’re too wimpy for that, they want to live it vicariously through someone else.

Everybody feels like an orphan; everyone wants a place to call home and everyone wants a chance to prove themselves.

[Note to the astute reader: I just gave you the three crucial ingredients of every marketing story and USP.]

Now… one would ASSUME that when you pluck an orphan out of an orphanage, give them a nice place to live and rescue them from loneliness, they will fall at your feet and thank you profusely.

Whether you are literally rescuing orphans – or figuratively, through whatever worthy thing you do in the world – know that orphans will NOT generally fall at your feet and thank you profusely.

I’ve found that when you serve people opportunities on a silver platter, the more likely they are to get mad at you or just screw it all up.

Once Laura showed me a picture of a little girl who’d spent years in a *terrible* orphanage in Eastern Europe. In the pic, she was pushing her new mama away with every muscle in her body. She didn’t trust anyone.

Of course we all know that girl still wanted to be taken care of, deep down. There’s that yin and yang.

This is THE original “head trash.” It’s the signature struggle of human beings – we’re orphans, we want a place to belong, we want to prove ourselves, but what do we do? We push away the people that welcome us. We sabotage our chances to prove ourselves.

I’ve got a friend Nate who adopted two girls from Ethiopia. They were thrilled to get new parents. Then they arrived home. The older one was mortified to find out they have…

Chores!

“What? Did you bring us here to be slaves? What do you think we are dad, cheap labor?”

Everybody’s walking around with an inner orphan child from Eastern Europe.

Everybody’s customers are walking around with inner orphan children from Eastern Europe too.

That means….

It’s EASY to get peoples’ attention by empathizing with their inner orphan. Every martial arts movie you ever saw starts with some wimpy guy getting his teeth kicked in, then he swears revenge, he sweats it out under the Kung Fu master, then demolishes the bad guys in the grand finale.

It’s E-A-S-Y to hook people with that story. You only have to tell it well.

#1 rookie mistake: “We’re so awesome and our stuff is so righteous, we can leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

#1 thing true pros say instead: “I took a job on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. One night a squall came up. It was so ferocious, a giant wave was about to hit. My captain said “KEVIN HIT THE DECK!” – I did and the wave struck. I went skittering across the deck, smashed my mouth into an iron railing and lost all my front teeth. Had I not hit the deck when he told me to, I would have been swept out to sea and lost forever.”

The rookie sales pitch is EASY to ignore.

But the orphan sales pitch is irresistible. How can you *not* stick around to hear what happened next?

Kevin Thompson has made millions from his Bering Sea story. I’m not sure he’d take his front teeth back if you offered Kevin a cash bonus.

There’s still one problem though:

Orphans can spin a great story – orphans can be as authentic as real life – but they don’t know how to help orphans stop being orphans.

In fact, since abandonment is in our DNA, the easiest thing for us to do is, after they’ve hooked everyone in with our great story, is disappear.

We don’t deliver the goods…. we deliver sub-standard goods…. then we multiply more orphan children, and we create what I call “cynicism inflation.”

Customer says, “Hey wait a minute. That guy told the PERFECT story. He described my pain EXACTLY. In fact I’m sure he DID feel my pain exactly. He had the exact right solution. And then he…. took the money and ran!”

And the temptation is to become so cynical, so mistrusting, so isolated, that nobody believes anybody.

The average marketer solves this by making up more BS and learning to tell a better and better story.

But here’s the thing:

There’s only ONE way out of this cycle. You must (1) deal with your own inner orphan, and (2) transition your customer from an orphan story to an adoption story.

In other words, that deeply ingrained orphan cycle has to get UN-learned.

That means, if you are in a leadership position in any marketplace, then you are a mom or you are a dad. Whether you realize it or not. Whether you like it or not.

Good moms and dads are in short supply. Always have been.

I remember hearing about some basketball player who was beating his girlfriend or some such thing…. whatever it was, he said he didn’t like being considered a “role model.” He was just a basketball player, that’s all.

My friend, if you’re a leader in anything, you ARE a role model. Like it or not.

I’ve noticed many of my best students, the ones who succeed with the least amount of zigging and zagging and self-sabotage, are people who were parented well.

Everybody else who does well realized on some level that they needed a different “mom voice” and a different “dad voice” than what they had before.

You’re either working to be a mom or dad role model… or you’re stuck being an orphan.

Which will it be?