Hey Paul and company,
James here, I've been a voyeur here for a LONG time and I'm finally ready to step into the light and interact with fellow permie humans
I've done my PDC and have already been teaching food growing courses to people for several years now. I'm a pretty radical and hardcore permie if I do say so myself (I poop in a bucket and all that good stuff).
That said, what I'm about to pose a
VERY different idea than most people in the sustainability and permaculture world are used to, so forgive me if you think I'm evil.
Here's the story:
All the evil corporations that most people hate have 1 powerful thing in common...
They have a business model that works.
What does that basically equate to?
They can PAY to SCALE their products. Most importantly, along with those products come their ideology!
I came to the conclusion a LONG time ago that if we are to make any change, we have to follow a model that works. We have to beat THEM at their own game.
That's why I've dedicated the past 3 years of my life to learning marketing like crazy. Ewww, gross right?
Au contraire!
I see marketing (and more importantly - direct selling) to be a powerful tool that more people in our movement might seriously consider embracing.
The good news is that with direct marketing you don't need to have a Coca Cola (butt heads) sized budget. You just need to have excellent products/offers that deliver REAL tangible results to the right audience. Now, if you can create an effective "Big Idea" or "Big Marketing Idea" to back it up. Now you're really gonna crush it. My dream is to develop a big idea that spreads permaculture to millions. I'm working on one right now, so please wish me luck
Dream for a second... There are millions of people on Facebook and YouTube, you just have to come up with unique and emotionally stirring way to grab their attention. It has to stop them in their tracks.
If I think of a solid "pattern interrupter" for Hugelkultur I'll definitely post it here!
For me, it's honestly NOT about making money. Other than a few plane tickets to take my family to Brazil every couple years to do permaculture there, I don't really need or want to live with a bunch of useless Federal Reserve Notes AKA money.
NO! It's about being able to finance the promotion of an ideology on a massive scale and thereby reach 50 MILLION people without any problem. It all starts by helping people achieve measurable results along the way and asking them to invest their money (or bitcoin or whatever) in exchange for that result.
Bottom line: If you're making money, you can invest that money back into paid media (ads) to get the message in front of more people... LOTS more.
Take that Coca Cola.
Note: 1. I've given a very broad overview of this idea/process. 2. Creating "Big Marketing Ideas" is extremely time consuming and involves a huge amount of creativity and following proven formulas that direct marketers have been using for about 100 years to make it happen. Personally, I've dedicated myself to mastering this process so we can see the needle move instead of watching the world burn. To me, it's at least worth a shot, even if it takes me the rest of my life.
Very interested in seeing what people think about this idea!
Peace,
James~
P.S. Paul, to answer your question about your increase from 600 to the 6,000 visits spike in traffic, it's likely that Hugelkulture was mentioned in some mainstream media report or article and people started searching for it. That sounds obvious, but the good news is more people are waking up! What if you helped just 100 of those 6,000 per day became hardcore permies? Ask me about ways to do that
