“The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.”
—Felix Adler
I got some advice once that I thought was pretty good: if you want to do something, go find someone who did it and do what they did to get it done.
Simple, right? Yeah. Effective, right? You bet.
Wait, here’s a thought: what if we used history as a huge stack of examples of people who did things, and documentation of how they did them?
Seems like that’s a lot more useful than the “history trivia” taught in schools, consisting of names, dates, and locations!
You want to create a media empire and reach many people through your words and voice? Don’t you think that Walt Disney, Hugh Hefner, and William Randolph Hearst could teach you a thing or two about how to do it?
If you have a cause and you would like to develop “believers” to spread your message, don’t you think that Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ might have related to people in ways you could use?
Or were you going to figure it all out yourself?
Maybe you thought that the only good marketing and authority building ideas have all come along within the past three to five years?
Nonsense.
History makes everything easier. Keeps you from making mistakes. Points the way.
Here’s something that might make you squirm: you don’t have to agree with the bad guys like cult leaders in order to swipe and deploy their tactics. You can separate an evil purpose from a solid strategy, and then use the good and throw out the bad.
My self-serving plug: find out your Authority Archetype at my website, and then opt in to get the recommended biographies. Start learning from these people.