Yea…

You read the title right.

I danced for 3 years while in college.

Seems kinda weird.

Out of all the things I could have done with my time, was dancing really one of them?

It may seem out of character in hindsight, but it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

I don't regret a thing.

I made amazing friends, made deeper connections with my existing friends, and learned a lot about myself, especially about marketing and sales, which is why you're here (most of you, at least).

So, if you're in business or you sell anything, the lessons I will share are super valuable.

Buckle up, let me explain:

Every year during my time in college at The University of Tampa, the people running Greek life (fraternities and sororities) host an annual Greek Week.

It's a competition where fraternities team up with sororities and compete to see which team is the best.

We paired up with a new sorority each year.

There were tons of events throughout Greek Week such as Bubble Soccer, Jeopardy, side-walk chalk drawing, and more.

The biggest event, out of all, was the Greek Variety Show (GVS).

It was a dance competition that was the finale of Greek Week.

The guys and girls had to perform a 10-minute dance to judges and an auditorium filled with friends, classmates, and family.

It was the most points out of every competition and was always on the Friday night at the end of Greek week.

Everyone looked forward to it.

Each year, there was an overall theme to Greek Week and each group had a team name based on the theme.

Here are the themes for my 3-years:

Year 1 Greek Week Theme: Holidays

My team was Valentine's Day

Year 2 Greek Week Theme: Heroes vs. Villains

My team was Harry Potter vs. Voldemort

Year 3 Greek Week Theme: Music Genres

My team was Team Alternative

Looking back at those performances made me realize we had to sell each dance.

We had to sell to the crowd and the judges especially.

Common denominators were hidden in those performances that got us on top each year.

I've always wanted to distill those winning factors and give them to my fraternity, like a GVS-winning formula, to help them win even after I was gone.

Even better, however,

I wanted to distill the winning factors to help you.

Not just for some measly dance competition,

But for everything you do.

Everything in Life is Sales

Whether you're a student, an employee, or a business owner, you are in the game of marketing and sales.

Everything we do is marketing and sales.

• You have to write persuasive essays, selling readers on your idea or opinion.

• You have to market your skillset through your resume to get an interview.

• You have to sell yourself to an employer during the interview to get hired.

• You have to use negotiation when buying a car or a house.

• You have to sell your family, friends, and your team on the vision of your company.

Everything regarding persuasion and communication involves marketing and sales.

Whether you know it or not, you are in the sales business.

This is a good thing.

It means that the more you learn about marketing and sales, the more you can use it to benefit your everyday life.

Getting better at sales will help you:

• Deal with rejection

• Handle uncomfortable situations

• Make more friends

• Make more money

• Improve your overall life.

With that being said,

Here are 3 lessons I found while doing 3-years of competitive dance in college:

Secret #1…

When we were first given our themes, no matter the year, I always thought others had it better.

I constantly compared our theme to others, thinking the grass was always greener on the other side.

I would brainstorm songs that other teams could use rather than focusing on my own team's songs and performance.

Looking back on each year,

Everything theme I had, ironically worked in our favor.

I realized that all 3 years, we had an edge over every other theme.

An edge that subconsciously either determined the rankings or heavily influenced them.

This edge pokes out in the early stages of development, but not everyone capitalizes on it.

Every team has the choice to take advantage, but few rarely do.

We were set up from the beginning, took advantage, and were favored because of it.

The edge was relatability.

Secret #1 = Know Who You're Selling To

The key to selling something to someone is that you need to be relatable.

Your customer needs to align with what you are selling in some way, shape, or form.

For us, each theme we had, was a layup.

Based on each judge's school involvement, their demographics, how they dressed, etc. you could predict that they:

1. Watched/read content in the romance genre.

2. We are into fiction like Twilight, Harry Potter, the Divergent series, etc.

3. Either listened to or could name some alternative music.

We had an edge because we connected with the judges in some way from the get-go.

To add to this point,

Here were the top 3 placing GVS teams for Year 3's performance:

1. Team Alternative

2. Team Musicals

3. Team Rock

Other teams that you would think would be placed higher, such as Team Rap or Team EDM, ranked lower than teams that, in my opinion, had worse performances.

It was because the judges didn't relate to those genres.

They didn't like most music in those genres, which is a reason why they chose certain genres over others, either consciously or subconsciously.

Whether they knew it in the moment or not,

They favored genres and music that aligned with their identity.

That's exactly how you should market your product or service.

If you are EXTREMELY clear on who your dream customer is and create your brand so that it aligns with your customer's identity, they will gravitate to it subconsciously.

Another way to think about it is like this:

Customers visualize whether they will use your product or not.

An employer will try to visualize you working in their office before even hiring you.

Your goal is to fit what you're selling into the mind of your customer like a puzzle piece.

Think about the last item you bought clothing, for example.

Why did you buy it?

Most likely, because you saw yourself wearing the article before even buying it.

Either by trying it on in a fitting room or holding it up and visualizing yourself wearing it.

Here's another example:

I bought an Owala water bottle recently.

Because I saw myself using it on the daily, number one.

And number 2, as I mentioned before, I bought it because it was simple, minimalistic, aesthetic, and functional.

Things that are a part of my identity and associated with things that I usually buy.

How does what you're selling align with the person you're selling to?

• Maybe it's your mission that they align with, your values, and what you represent.

• Maybe it's the culture, the type of people who they want to associate with.

• Maybe it's the design, is it bougie and aesthetic? Or, is it tough and rugged?

Get a really good understanding of this concept and it will make marketing and selling anything WAY easier.

Secret #2…

"So how do we want this dance to go?"

After the 2023 New Year, the captains and I hopped on a Zoom call to kick off our Year 3 of GVS.

There were six of us, and we were all stumped.

"Does anyone know any alternative music?", we asked over and over.

We felt like we drew the short straw.

Granted we learned after the fact,

There are a ton of amazing Alternative artists and music:

Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, and Fall Out Boy, to say the least, are all in the "Alt Rock" category, so we had potential.

For the dance, however, we thought long and hard.

After some reflection,

I realized…

For the past 2 years,

Valentine's Day and Harry Potter,

Both dances got first place cause they both had the same thing in common…

The V-Day dance was about a girl who got cheated on and bumped into a new boy she fell in love with.

The music represented her emotions.

Harry Potter's dance went like this.

• Opens with Voldemort killing Harry's parents

• Harry enters the life of a wizard

• A dance for each of the four Hogwarts houses.

• A quidditch dance

• A Death-eaters dance

• Harry vs. Voldemort dance + fight

• Harry wins + the finale.

Both themes told a story.

Secret #2 = Sell Through Stories

After sharing this with the team on Zoom,

We went to work,

And came up with a story that somehow fit in the alternative genre.

It took creative work, but we pulled it off.

Our story went like this:

During the night of his 13th birthday, a little boy named Will gets awoken by a fairy who shows him an older version of himself going through life/

This teaches Will the importance of making the right choices.

Each song in the genre represented a specific point in future Will’s life, here were our picks:

• Adventure of a Lifetime by Coldplay (The opening)

• Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus (Teenage-years)

• Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon (College + meeting his future wife)

• I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At The Disco (Marriage)

• Mr. Brightside by The Killers (Having Kids)

• Numb by Linkin Park (His wife leaves him)

• Centuries by Fall Out Boy (Growing old)

• Good Riddance by Green Day (End of his life, meeting his older self)

• Walking on a Dream by Empire Of The Sun (Finale)

For thousands of years, humans have used stories to share information.

We are hard-wired to learn and change through stories.

When we listen, we empathize with the characters, we relate to them.

We feel their pain, even if we're not physically experiencing it.

We feel courageous when the characters stand up to adversity.

We extract lessons from the stories because we learn as the characters learn.

Jesus Christ taught in parables, in stories, because his followers were able to relate and extract lessons as the stories concluded.

The lessons were more effective through stories because even the listeners went through a transformation.

Stories inspire the listener to take action.

Sharing stories through your marketing allows your customers to empathize, learn, and take action.

Think of customer-success stories, they are meant to be relatable and inspire action.

With your marketing and selling, you need to show the transformation of before, during, and after using your product.

You need to show them how your product/service helps them achieve their goals.

You need to show an employer how you will help them achieve their objectives.

An effective way to do this is to share a story about how you helped another company/employer achieve their goals.

The skill of storytelling is immensely powerful.

Ted-talk speakers and seminar speakers keep and hold the attention of their audience because they are masters at storytelling.

If you want to build your people skills, get good at telling stories.

Secret #3:

Days before unveiling our dance during Year 3,

I had a flashback to the first year's dance, my Sophmore year.

The opening of that dance had us sneaking into the crowd and crouching in the aisles of the theater, completely stealth.

As the opening song started,

We rose out of the shadows, dancing to a mashup of Love Tonight by Shouse that transitioned into Million Voices by Otto Knows.

Out of all 3-years, this had the best opening, by far.

I snapped out of the flashback and returned to the present moment with one word, one concept that made that opening the banger it was.

I had to tell my team immediately.

Later, during rehearsal, I brought it up and tried to sear it into everyone's heads, making sure they took it with them onto the stage in a few days.

That word…

Infection.

"You gotta infect the audience," I said to them, "you gotta move with so much energy that they're naturally infected with that same positive happy energy that we have."

Secret #3 = Marketing and Sales is about Energy Transfer.

Energy is a force that few understand.

What we do know about it, is that it ebbs and flows through every one of us.

Energy can put us in a terrible mood, or make us feel incredible and alive.

I learned that we had to transfer our energy to the audience and the judges if we wanted them to think highly of us.

Kinda like osmosis:

Where water in a cell transfers from high concentration to low concentration.

We had to create an abundance of energy that could be transferred to the audience through the music, the lighting, our dancing, and the environment.

There's an old adage by expert sales coach, Zig Ziglar, "To be convincing, you have to be convinced."

What this means is that when you are selling a product/service, you have to believe in your product with so much conviction, that energy gets transferred into the prospect and the belief in it too.

If you truly believe your product/service is the greatest thing since sliced bread (and communicate it) your customer will too.

My team knew that we had the best dance, the best choreography, the best music.

All we had to do, was share it with the audience and the judges.

Then, let everything else take care of itself.

True marketing and sales have never been about the sketchy tactics and manipulation that are commonly associated with them in today's culture.

If you truly love the product you are selling and talk about why you love it to your potential customers, they will buy from you.

Simple as that.

We knew we had the best dance, in all three years.

We knew it in our hearts.

Because of that, because we knew our customer, and because we told compelling stories…

it sold the crowd,

and it especially sold the judges.

Year, after year, after year.

Thank you for reading this week's newsletter.

It took a different turn this week, and I hope you enjoyed it.

This past week, I was guest-featured on The Process Podcast, hosted by my good friend Palmer Kahren.

He posted part one earlier this week and I talked about my journey, the path to building wisdom, creating content online, and much more.

Check out out here:

I yapped for so long in this episode, that he had to split it into two parts, so stay tuned for that.

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I'm using Twitter, especially as a public notebook where I document my thoughts and lessons I'm learning in real time.

So if you're anything like me, the lessons I share will aid you on your journey.

With that,

Thanks for reading, I wish you the best.

Godspeed.

— Ferrone