Tricking The Giant & The Hag

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We’re going to continue our discussion about The Drummer and the journey through the forest to the glass mountain. We’ve done that in two episodes prior. We’ve gotten to the top of the glass mountain and encountered the hag. We need to continue talking about the three tasks that the hag gives the drummer. Is that right, Bill?



That’s correct. One of the biggest challenges in the political world as well as in marketing, branding and promoting a person’s product or service as politicians are doing is they’re trying to create an identity. One of the biggest challenges is when you create an identity and stand for something, people hold you to that identity. They hold you right on the spot to that identity, “You’re this.” They tagged a meaning on top of that identity, “You are standing for this. Therefore, you’re a.” They put the label on it and they create meaning around it. Most of the time, that’s not true or it doesn’t encompass fully what the person is standing for. What winds up happening is the candidate, whether it’s Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker. They say one thing in their identity gets stuck there.

They said this. Therefore, they’re one of those people that say that. It’s tough. It’s one of the reasons why President Donald Trump has been so successful. He hops into the new identity and doesn’t allow that to stick so much he becomes very teflony as an identity.

The person makes up a belief about him and says, “No, he’s this person.” You’re going to like, “Have you listened to the last five things he said on this thing?” Their brain has been tricked into believing that their identity is stuck because there’s no time to have a discussion on what identity he has. This part of the story is going to help us with that and help us understand how to find the truth in messaging and how to allow that message to carry forward. If you’re standing for one message and you stay too long on it, people will pigeonhole you into that message and keep their identity in that spot. Does that make some sense about how that truth is being constructed?

It does it. It’ll be helpful to have us talk about an example.

Since that little piece of the framework is done, we could take a look at what the example might be. If Joe Biden tells a story that’s a conglomeration of different stories like the Iraq War, he’s telling a conglomeration of stories. That story could say, “They’re not all in the same spot and they’re being woven together.” That’s one of the challenges if you do that, you’re going to get eaten. You’re spending too much time defending the story. If you keep it short the way Donald Trump does, you don’t get eaten on it. He does it in such untrue sound bites, partial truths or modestly true the person still standing with the old belief that he’s this guy and they give them the pass. Even the news anchor will give him a pass, “Donald Trump doesn’t lie.”

What he does though is he gives small messages that when we measure the truth of it, regrettably, it’s not much above a level six.

Most of the time, it’s a level four and maybe even sometimes 1 or 2 on the truth scale. Ten being the truth, it’s modest, low or closer to the untrue part of the story. Regrettably, truth is like a spectrum. I know people want to argue this one with me, “Isn’t the fact the truth?” If it’s written in a textbook, does that make it a fact? If a textbook has to be rewritten, every two years or four years because some of the facts that they wrote in there aren’t true or not languaged accurately, then truth is on a scale. Things are evolving and we should, in a positive sense, have an evolving message as human beings. That’s why truth is so important to us to keep coming back to is, here’s where this truth is at this moment. Does that Joe Biden example give you a little bit of an idea? We could relate it to the hag story.

Things are evolving and we should, in a positive sense, have an evolving message as human beings.

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The Joe Biden one does make sense. It’s interesting because I hear what you’re saying about how Donald Trump is good at doing this a lot. He doesn’t go on with this long story about something. He speaks in headlines in sound bites, they’re quick. Joe Biden tells this long story of trying to put metal on an Iraq or Afghanistan war veteran who didn’t want to do it. While there is some truth to that, there was a lot in the story. He went on and droned on about this story and a lot of details about it to the point where people started fact-checking and poking holes in it like, “Is that true? Did that happen there?” It was three different stories coming together and that seemed to hurt Joe Biden. There’s a key difference. Joe Biden didn’t intend to tell a story that was lower on the truth scale, whereas, Donald Trump doesn’t care where he is on the truth scale. I don’t know how that plays.



I’m not going to do that. I’m managing this series of moments. Every time he comes out for chopper talk, it is what he does, “I’m going to come out and stand in front of the helicopter.” Chopper talk lands a certain way and here’s the message. What I’m going to do with such a small message. Let’s get back to our story. What happened was, one could argue that the hero in our story stole the saddle from the two guys at the bottom. They got to the top of this glass mountain first to get meet the hag for the first time. What he did was he knew where he wanted to go and he didn’t want to get caught in who saddle’s it was and whose saddle it wasn’t because it was a magic saddle. He wants to go and he’s going to choose not to get caught in the daily mental arguments between two points of view. Tom, have you ever gotten caught for 1, 2, 7, 15 or 20 minutes? “Should I do this?”

Sure.

That’s a saddle conversation.

Is this between being a decision-maker and taking action versus staying in this place of permanent potential weighing the options?

Most of the candidates are in permanent potential. Elizabeth Warren has claimed the plan, “We have a plan for that. We’ve written about that. This is what it is. If you like to go look at it, go look at over there.” Look at it over there is putting the stick out there in the distance and letting the reporter run on it. It’s like, “I’m not talking about that. I’m going up there to the glass mountain. I’ve already decided on this. This is what this is going to look like when I’m there.” Even Amy Klobuchar has done that too, “Here’s what the first 100 days are going to look like. Here’s what the four years are going to look like.”

For those people that are interested in the detail, which is not the broad electorate as a whole but some people want to look under the hood and see that it doesn’t make sense. They can go and get that but the candidate isn’t stuck focusing on that and arguing truth or facts.

Don't think that you have to work so hard. Let the messaging come to you.

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It’s one of those things where it doesn’t matter if you are that leader and you have integrity. Saying it isn’t going to have anybody believe it. You have to demonstrate it.



Thank you very much for the word demonstrate because that’s what the hag makes him do next. He spends the night. The hag feeds him. He sleeps in the hut with the hag and she says, “You can sleep here, just promise to do these three tasks and you can sleep here. You can have food and rest here.” He says, “Yes, I’ll do that.” The next morning when the sun comes up, he wakes up, but the hag has already awake. The hag’s already there. Have you ever woken up in the morning and all kinds of stuff on your mind instantly?

Sure.

That’s it. That’s that moment right there. The hag is already up before you get up. He comes out of the house and he looks out and over by the lake. The hag is standing over there. He walks over to the lake and the hag said, “I have this one small task. It’s an easy task.” He had already agreed to do the task. It’s an easy task to do. Here’s this thimble. What I’m going to ask for you to do, what I need to be done is I need all the water out of this lake and I need all the fish in the lake lined up by size and type.

Use the thimble to remove the water from the lake?

That’s the task, “It’s a small task,” she says. I think you can do this. This is a very easy task to do. That’s similar to managing the moments of a presidency. Every moment is a thimble. Every moment is the right thing to say at the right time. You’ve got to manage the moments. You cannot think about, “I am entering the water of a lake.” As soon as you think that, you’re in big trouble because it’s too big. The Federal Government is too big for the brain to run on straight out logic. You cannot run it that way. You have to run it as a mixture of logic, emotion, implementation, and vision. If you don’t have those four ingredients, you’re going to get creamed.

If you get stuck in any one of those for, which Donald Trump never does, he never gets stuck because he’s always shifting. There is not a lot of logic there but the logic there is more centered on belief bias. He keeps going back to his base on the side of the beliefs because he knows there are bad people over there. That’s what he’s doing. He keeps going back to the belief structure and that’s why he keeps all his people in line because he does that same marketing and sales message. Everybody who’s reading this, it’s all about marketing and sales, which is something he knows how to do, which is to capture media, get the media to pay attention and get the media giant to carry him.

You've got to stay focused on keeping the message consistent, land, and get traction, and move on to the next message.

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He said, “I’m tired. I need to rest.” When did he rest? After they lost the midterms. All the Republicans were there. He had to deal with two groups of Republicans. It didn’t stop him. He signed the legislation into action. Even in the face of all the obstructionism that was going on. He saw what they were up to, “They’re doing obstruction.” As the drummer is sitting by the shoreline, what happens next is significant. He’s gone, “I’m tired.” He rests, “I’m hungry and I need some food.” Magically without him seeing it, a woman comes out of the hut with a basket filled with food, bread and wine. She sits next to him and says, “You’re tired. Here’s some food. There’s some wine. Let’s make this easier for you. Put your head in my lap and take a nap.” What would you do?



That’s a hard offer to turn down.

He can eat some food. Drink some wine. Take a nap and so he does. While he’s napping, she holds her hand up and she’s got this gold ring on her finger. She turns the ring once and says, “Fish out.” All the fish jump out of the lake onto the shoreline in size and type. She turns a ring for the second time, “Water out.” The water magically is eliminated out of this small lake. The water goes out. After about 1.5 hours, maybe a couple of hours he wakes back up. She’s sitting there. He looks at the waters out of the lake and the fish are lined up here. He says, “How did you do this?” “It was easy. Rest, eat and care for yourself. Let the visions come to you.” Let the messaging come to you. Let it line up. Let things line up for you. Don’t think that you have to work so hard.

Donald Trump surely didn’t work that hard getting elected. All he did was show up and everybody else lined the fish up for him. He didn’t do any of that. He’s not a master leader. He’s a master messenger. He messages things. He doesn’t lead things in and tells people what to do. He tells people what to do. He gets mad and then they work around him to get things done. What does he do? Sleep and rest. How do we know this? Look at his logs. Look at what he does on executive time. He’s sleeping and resting and letting the world hand it to him. All he’s got to do is come out and give all these micro reckless messages.

The chopper talk.

It’s the same thing with many dictators, many leaders and these kinds of people. They’ve had all these different people around them that get the fish in alignment for them to do the wreckage stuff that they do. They don’t make the decisions. They generally guide the vision. Everybody says, “Don’t message this.” “What are you talking about?” I’m the one who got elected. Not you guys. He’s generally guiding the vision. Finally, the people that are bucketing the water out of the lake or trying to put the fish in alignment that he keeps scrambling all the time.

That is a classic leadership move. It’s usually something intentional. Think of John F. Kennedy. We had no ability already established to get to the moon in 1962 or something. He says we’re going to put a man on the moon and bring him back. He had no idea, nor did he care about how they were going to do it. He set the vision and trusted the other people to figure it out.

Don't spend too much time chopping down one tree.

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Remembering that he is the marketing and salesperson that sells the sizzle and has no steak. He sells an airline but can’t run an airline. He didn’t find the people around the airline or if they say, “Mr. President. You cannot put a marble sink in an airplane. If you put a marble sink in there, yes, it’s first-class, but the plane is now too heavy to take off.” They pull out all the stuff that weighs so much and heavy so much and they’re like, “People pay us.” It’s like, “No, they won’t.” It’s like, “Why traveling this luxury?” No. The main thing about it is that they’re dealing with these tasks. The hag of the environment is you can’t trick this hag. You’ve got to stay focused on keeping the message consistent, making the message land and get traction and move on to the next message.



When you do that, it’s not a message of progress. It’s a message of vision. It can’t be a message of progress because if it’s a message of progress you get stuck in Hillary Clinton doldrums, the doldrums of the Hillary Clinton, this is what progress is looking, “I have this. I have this.” People eventually didn’t care because they lost the vision of having a first woman president. She became benign to that point. We were going from the first black president to a first woman president. We’re able to do that in a compelling way because we’re looking at her resume. We’re not looking at Trump that they didn’t vote resume. They voted Trump. They voted sales and marketing and this is one of the things that all the candidates have to get ahold of.

This is a marketing and sales piece. This is not progress, what’s good for America’s piece? You got to sell the vision of America, not the process of being an American. It’s unsettling for me to give this level of truth because if we’re doing it the other way. What happens is that he still claims the space of here’s these messaging. It’s not an inclusive message. It’s a separate message. It’s a little harder to sell an inclusive message. Unless you say, “This is what America stands for. It stands or this.” You have to be a reminder of what America stands for. “It stands for this not for that.” You can’t say it stands for that. All of the people in Germany had to deal with that after Hitler was gone. After every single leader leaves the space, all the people around them have to say, “What do we stand for then? What are we going to be able to do?”

The Marshall Plan for a post-World War II provided a framework for Germany, Europe and Japan to rebuild itself. It provided a framework. This is the way this society’s going to go and by the way, we’re putting military bases around here to make sure it goes that way. How is America going to face infrastructure problems? How is it going to deal with the powers that be in Corporate America that either from the fossil fuel industry, insurance industry or the religious industry? How is it going to face those big giants?

I better get 100 drummers going more like 1 million, 5 million, 15 million, 25 million. We’ve got to get the drummer’s moving in the right direction and the small messages get the giant to consider that that’s a good idea that there’s something in it for the giant if they carry this candidate forward and that things will tend to go better. Tom, what’s your extraction from this first part of the story?

We’ve got the poor drummer having to chop down a forest.

I like the fact that he starts to chop down the forest, so he has some first-hand knowledge of what it takes to chop down such a large forest but there’s no way he’s dropping that whole forest down in a day. Hopefully, he’s going to learn that a little quicker this time.

That’s what we’re hoping. We’ve got hope that you got to move and take a look at all the different messages. Joe Biden’s story is a great example of it. Don’t spend too much time chopping down one tree. Set the intention of the tree falling. Set the intention of this is the message of this is why this tree is important and then magical stuff will happen next.

I got this mental picture in my mind, Bill, of probably every building that Donald Trump has ever done a real estate deal to build a new building. He’s probably been there at the groundbreaking with a shovel, shoveled one shovel worth of dirt and moves on. Let everybody else build the building and said, “I built that building.”