How Do You Like Me Now?

I was watching the biography of country singer Toby Keith recently and was intrigued by the controversy of his song, "How Do You Like Me Now?" It's about a guy who couldn't get the attention of his dream girl in high school. The guy ultimately becomes rich and famous and the song is basically a declaration of "in your face girls!"

There are all kinds of motivation...positive and negative. Bill Bartmann writes in his book about  "personal motivators." The example he gave of a negative motivator was his future sister-in-law. She was always telling her sister what a loser Bill was (at the time he didn't have much going for himself) and how she should dump the chump.

Bill wrote the sister's name on several 3x5 cards and posted them around his dorm room to help motivate him to finished college. Bartmann told Forbes magazine that without that "personal motivator" of wanting to prove his future sister-in-law wrong, he would never have finished college.

Remember the beginning of this post where I mentioned about the concern for controversy when Keith released his song? It never happened! In fact, women were just as drawn to the song as men because they had their own episode in life where someone didn't want them or believe in them and they wanted to prove that person wrong.

There are times that I think "negative motivation" is a great tool. You wouldn't want to use it constantly but if you have a incident or two in your past that you want to use in a positive way...go for it!

Happy Selling!