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Minstrel might be a more accurate word, but from the 1850’s on, that word has gained a different and less desirable meaning in the U.S.

Long before there were written languages, history was passed orally from place to place, and generation to generation.  Stories and news were memorized, often set to rhyme or meter because the tales were so long.  Even after languages allowed histories to be written down, the cost of making copies or of transporting original works was so high that traveling tell-tales were still important.

If you read my books or articles – even my blog posts – you’ll note that I spend a lot of time telling stories.  Narratives allow the teller to work in facts and statistics, important words and phrases, in specific places and in order.  Tales allow the listener/reader to absorb salient points without having said points stick in their mental craw.  Or simply: stories help facts go down, like sugar helps medicine go down.

We are programmed to remember stories and rhymes – studies have shown this over and over again.  The Bible uses parables or illustrative stories to make moral lessons easier to remember.  Easy-to-remember stories are also easy-to-repeat stories.

Some of us, it’s true, are more at home with a roster of facts, figures and statistics.  Some of us (including myself) did very well in school because we remembered dates, names and other ephemera and could regurgitate it on command.  But narratives – stories with a beginning, middle and end, and having a moral or “point” to them – are easier for most members of our culture to remember.  (Oddly, this particular post doesn’t try to tell a story!  Hmm. . . )  If you can remember the story, you can apply it’s lessons.

Which is why I spend a lot of time educating via stories.

A couple years back, I was approached to ghost write a book.  It didn’t quite work out the way either of us planned, and so I became the co-author of the book.  It’s a book about the modeling business.

Well, it’s really a marketing book for models.  It’s the same advice I give to a lot of my other clients, couched in terms of the modeling industry, and sprinkled with liberal amounts of  “personality” from my co-author and the star of the show.

The dirty little secret is: I’m re-writing the book for two other industries.  Most of the info will be the same, just immersed in examples from that particular field the book’s targeted toward.

The elephant in the room: first, that I’ve got my name on a book covering an adult – possibly scandalous – topic.  And I’ve written a number of articles to expand on topics I didn’t feel were adequately covered in the book.

The blind men and the elephant.  We’re all familiar with the story of four blind men in a room with an elephant, each trying to guess at the whole by examining only a part with their limited senses.  A snake, for the man holding the trunk.  A boulder for the man feeling the side.  A tree for the man wrapping his arms around the leg.  And a palm frond for the man holding the ear.

In writing books exploring different aspects of marketing for different industries, I’m learning not only about those industries, but more about marketing as a whole.  I’m seeing it from different angles, defining and testing different marketing principles.  I’m practicing what I teach to interns: spend your career trying to prove the experts are wrong.  In doing so, I become a much better advocate for my clients who have no association with the industries in which my books and articles are set.

I find that as we learn more and more about something – a task, a subject, a person – we tend to gloss over and eventually ignore The Basics.  We think we know everything about whatever or whomever, and jump right over the foundational things that got us to where we are now.  We start to run, without bothering to walk.

Starting to learn karate at age 36 was a real eye-opener.  I watched other people in the dojo, some who’d started before me, and others who’d come after.  I noticed that most people, regardless of their age, wanted to just plow ahead and learn the next technique, the next form (kata).  I felt like I didn’t fit in, because I felt I was being pushed along too quickly.  I knew there were deeper meanings about what I’d already been taught that I wasn’t being given the time to learn.

I’d never been on a learning spiral before, and it amazed me to see that the simple building blocks fit together and made up the more advanced techniques I was learning.  (I was one of those people whose natural learning process was self-directed, and made a steep – almost vertical – climb, until I hit something I didn’t intuitively understand.  Then I dropped that subject and went on to the next.)  Coming back around to something I’d already studied, this time from a higher level of experience, brought me a lot of knowledge and insight I could not have gotten the first time around.

It was when I started to teach karate that I began to appreciate The Basics.  Not just the basics of karate, but of anything.  Everything.  That’s when I decided I would offer internships at Agile’.  I began to see that anything which wasn’t built on a solid foundation was often useless.  Worse, it could be damaging to the person doing them.

Too often I see long-time marketers rushing in to deep, convoluted campaigns without making sure The Basics are in place.  And their clients, not knowing any better, simply pay the bills and think, “This is costing me an arm and a leg – it must be worth it!”  When the campaigns fall flat, when the new customers fail to arrive carrying armloads of cash, it’s the economy’s fault, or the media’s fault, or Joe in the mailroom.  It’s never the marketer, and never the customer.

When I’m hired by a client, I’m expected to be able to perform my job.  That’s why I’ve been hired; the client is an expert at what they do, and I’m an expert at marketing.  They don’t want to know what I know, they want me to reach into my black box of tricks and perform a miracle or three.

I do that better and more often than others, because I know and can apply The Basics.

Many of my clients come to me with preconceived notions about who they are and what their customers are looking for.  Sometimes they’re on the money, but that’s beside the point.  Being rigid and inflexible about being found on the ‘net can lead to a severe lack of business.

Say your pipes break at 3 AM.  Going old school, you grab the phone book, turn to those pages of a certain color, and look up Plumbers.  In this particular medium, everyone has agreed that the publisher will sort the listings for you, and they’ve all decided (randomly?) to sort in ascending alphabetical order.  So “A-Plus Plumbing” is listed before “Baker Family Plumbing,” which is listed before “Carruthers’ A#1 Pipe Service,” ad infinitum.  You go down the list in order (that is to say, in alphabetical order) and try the numbers.  The first one that answers gets your emergency business.  For almost a century, businesses have had an incentive to name themselves “AAAAA SomethingOrOther” because of this means of searching for a business contact.

On the web, in most of the search engines, you can plug in as much information or as little as you want and search.  In the above example, you want someone who does 24/7 emergency service, but your “search engine” forces you to read every single ad in alphabetical order.  The first company on the list to answer could be in another county, or specialize in something you don’t need.

On the ‘net, you can sort by percentage matched to your exact criteria.  But just like the paper model, what if the best person for the job simply has a small listing that says, “I’m here” – how do you find them during a search?

You need to put yourself in places where you’ll be tripped over.

Write articles about your profession, or about your hobbies.  Participate in on-line discussions and blogs.  Post pictures from industry conventions.  Get recommended by your fans, and cursed out by your competition.  Anything and everything!  Whatever you do, always always always include a link back to your main sales site.  When you’re tripped over, people who didn’t even know they wanted to business with you may become paying customers.

Here’s the secret: you need to place yourself and your company to be tripped over all over the place – not just the Internet!  Articles, books, discussion boards, charity fundraisers, political action groups. . . anywhere people interact and will see your name.