Jason Leister: The Secret to Instant Attraction (Part I)

Image courtesy of stockimages/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve never been a very polarizing person. Actually, for most of my life, my goal was to be anything but polarizing. Growing up as a child and into early adulthood, there’s no way I could have taken the heat that being polarizing creates.

I was allergic to conflict and would do anything to avoid it. But once I got into the world of “selling myself” for a living, I quickly realized just how effective being a polarizing figure could be.

Oh I didn’t do it, of course, for reasons I just mentioned. But I saw other people do it. Successful people.

I saw the effects of it, but I really misunderstood the mechanics of how it works. I saw people like Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush and more. All pretty polarizing people. Lots of people love those guys, plenty don’t.

As I got deeper into the business of consulting and publishing etc., I realized just how valuable the whole idea of polarization could be.

So I gave it a shot. I’m happy to report that I’ve destroyed any and all evidence of those first (poor) attempts. So don’t bother looking for them. Just take my word for it, they were bad. They were bad because I truly misunderstood the entire process.

Why “Polarization” Works

The biggest problem in business, especially business online, is differentiation. Your customers, clients, prospects are awash in a sea of sameness.

They’re barely paying attention as it is (the cat just spilled coffee on their leg, their kid just cracked an egg on the floor) and when they do pay attention for a minute, they see very little that speaks to them.

They look out and just see a bunch of gray. And so they go back to what they were doing.

Polarizing people changes this. Polarizing people sets up structure where there is none. Polarizing people offers a very practical way for someone to answer the question, “Do I belong here? Should I stick around?”

There’s a huge amount of value in being able to offer the marketplace a tool like this. So how do you do it?

Well for goodness sake, don’t do what I did years ago when I realized the power of this. I took a look at some polarizing figures and just started doing the things they did.

Why I Don’t Like “Modeling”

Modeling” successful people is a pretty popular route to success. I don’t like it. And the reason I don’t like it is because it’s a pretty good way to keep yourself from ever doing the real work you need to do.

Instead of figuring things out from the inside out, you change the outside. And often times, you do that with little or no understanding of the internal workings that made the outside of something look the way it does.

So you see Mr. Successful brushing his teeth with his left hand and you assume that you should do that too. Little do you know that the poor guy only uses his left hand because of his arthritic right thumb that he got from winning the national sewing competition as a kid.

Kind of a silly example, but you get the point.

As I gave this whole topic a lot of thought over the years, I eventually realized that I was pursuing the wrong thing.

It’s the same as every other example of attraction in the universe. If you pursue something directly, it will flee.

Early on, I pursued the goal of “polarizing” my prospects directly and I failed big time. But then I figured it out…

Check back next week for what the answer was…