Find Your Tomatoes

Every human mindset lives in 4 ages. Not everyone is destined to live up to all four. I usually don’t like to talk in theories and big words so let’s simplify it. If I traveled 12,000 years back in time to a human being this illustrates what I would deal with; 

The average man whom I would meet would go and hunt in the wildlife for food all day long. Then he comes back home “honey I’m home” (in cave man accent) she cooks his catch and that is it. If the surrounded place had no food they migrate to a different place to acquire food. Their life can be summed up into work, eat, sleep, socialize and repeat. Many people across the world in 2014 live by that concept. They work daily in order to provide food with limitations based on their amount of work per day. They strive every single day to repeat the whole process. If one day they got sick their financial status gets hurt. No work near their place! They travel where ever there is work in order to provide food on the table. Corporate or independent employee’s in many specialties work this way. This is called Hunter-gatherer age.

Now, let’s suppose I decided to take that hunter into a desert. And I told him “I have tomato seeds let’s plant them, we only need a fertile land, much water and physical labor” at first that hunter will not mind. There is only one problem he won’t get paid at the end of the day. He wouldn’t find food on the table. Let’s say I had decent persuasion cave man skills to persuade him to work for this land as a part time job.  Still his daily hunting income will get affected and therefore will not join my journey to make a farm. So I decided to go with this alone and this is very risky as 12 millenniums ago. There wasn’t a book called “Farming for DUMMIES” or maybe if I messed up I would have no GOOGLE to ask. So it’s all based on my trials and observations.

So every day I wake early to prepare the land, insert the seed, sow it, add vast amount of water and wait. I kept doing this for nearly 10 months long. I’ve dealt with difficult times in providing food so I went for part time job for some hunter to provide fractions of food to keep me alive. I get mocked by all the hunters in the society on how dumb, ill-minded I am. Not only I’m trying to strive to not get hungry but also to preserve the least amount of self-esteem to keep me going. 10 months later the tomatoes made a fascinating garden. I said to myself finally I have something to relay on for some time without continues working. Not only this had I sold some of it to buy a new place to stay near my garden.

Later on, I got tired of eating only tomatoes so I planted cucumbers, broccoli, peas, beans, corn, and mangos. Then I traded some of it with my neighbor hunters for meat as I’m not planning to be a weak, tired vegetarian zombie plus I bet they are tired of meat as well. After a while I had my own empire of farm. It became a money making machine. I made my own system “plant,wait,sell” and during the wait I had my own crops to “eat or trade”. However, there is a major drawback. I still had to work all day; my farm business was still based on me alone. So I asked myself why not hire some of the hunters to work for me? And there it was my first plan to turn my mindset from HUNTER AGE to FARMER-Gatherer AGE.

So if you are an employee who works hard in the morning and part time in the evening in a business to enlarge it. However you don’t earn a single dime for each day of labor from that evening time job. After a while if you are committed to that business you’ll start harvesting after a certain amount of period of commitment. But remember you have to decide something to become an authority later on. I gave a tomato as an example of specialty. You can’t expect to be an authority in all aspects. Choose one, and only ONE. Work on it hard after a while you’ll turn yourself into an authority in that criteria. Focusing on various aspects will worn you out as it will give you an illusion of being a FARMER, when you are only a hard-working HUNTER. Search for your tomatoes, work for it hard to become the guy that people seek when they need Tomatoes.

Hang on it doesn’t end there. After sometime I needed to inflate my income. Selling tomatoes are cheap as it’s a raw material. So I decided to get out and see what are tomatoes used for and at the first home I stumbled upon I looked through the window to find a family making spaghetti with tomato sauce. A huge dancing light-bulb blinks right above my head. What if I stopped selling tomatoes and turned it into “Tomato sauce”. So to confirm my new idea I visited all districts to look through the window and find most were making tomato sauce out of tomatoes. I began to sell pack of tomato sauce. Each pack is 3 times the price of one raw tomato. Now what if I planted “Red-Hot-Pepper” and mixed it with the sauce giving me a new invention “Hot-sauce” … Oh my god I’m a genius! This sells 5 times the price of both one tomato and red-hot-pepper combined. Not only this I started planning systematic approaches to everything I do. Why? Well if my procedure is systematic (means well known constant steps) it can easily be AUTOMATED. This means fewer mistakes, less humans more machines. Therefore entering a new age called INDUSTRIAL-GATHERER AGE. Then I decided to leave my farm and build my own industry buy TOMATOES from farmers turn it into Sauce, sell it 3-5 times the price. Then I no longer deal with HUNTERS. Only FARMERS are working for me now.

That’s the case for each worker in this age even if he decides to follow the farmers age without any improvement he’ll work for the ones who live in the industrial age. Unless he starts getting his head out of his farm and observe what people use on daily-basis that can be processed from his current tomatoes. It’s all about supply and demand but in a large powerful scale. That employee I mentioned earlier who turned his business into profits must search for a new improved way to systematize it to induce automation into his work. For example if you are running a coffee shop and found most of your customers are in a rush and prefer “Take-away”. Make a coffee machine outside your store that makes coffee in less than a minute. People will love you as we live in a time people prefer the most shortcut approach. This means fewer efforts on your employees less costs on materials, more efficiency, and more happy customers plus on top of that you can reach a state where everything is automated. This is huge when you think about it and relate it to your tomatoes.

Finally, the next age is considered the most top. Looking back to see I’ve found my tomatoes, worked on it. I became an authority in it, turned it into sauce “based on people’s desire”, inflated my income and automated the process. What’s NEXT?

It’s time for some real science to interfere with my procedure. I hear it’s expensive being a woman and according to dailymail.co.uk. Average lady spends 221.17 US dollars on skin care products. If each woman lived average of 65 years she’ll spend 14,287.88 US dollars on only skin care products. Nearly every woman on the planet wants a clear brightening healthy skin. Most women nearly 100% would agree with me on that one.

Haven’t you heard according to the recent researches that tomatoes help in balance the skin and get rid of excessive oil. There are also many antioxidants in tomatoes. They are rich in vitamin C making it helpful for acne and brightening dull skin and tomatoes also contain vitamin A which is needed for healthy skin. I started to open my research lab to hire some dermatologists to get me a face-cream-tomato. I could also make Acne-tomato-cream for female teenagers. I started hiring designers to build a design combining the idea of a tomato on the face. I invested in advertisements and TV commercials between series but not any series, I don’t wont to waste my hard earned money.So I searched for dramatic, romantic series that only female watches. Ofcourse, if a guy watches this stuff there is something wrong with him. I’m targeting an audience of romance, drama and emotions. Now can you analyze what I just DID?

I’ve combined the knowledge of dermatology along with marketing science to sell my tomatoes to a special kind of audience that dominates 50% of the planet Earth. Notice that I didn’t sell my tomatoes to be cooked or added to food. I sold it literally on the face and guess what they’ll love it more if I add most popular fragrances they frequently buy. Again what did I just do? I’m beginning to analyze the human psychology and human behavior adding it to my knowledge ingredient to come up with something practical and works. 

This smell thing came to me when I analyzed Cinnabon restaurants in every mall I go to. Cinnabon restaurant takes place next to irrelevant stores and not in the restaurants area. Why on earth do they do that? I mean they are not that dumb to realize they are in the wrong place! When I investigated I found they play on the smell of their product. As when you go shopping you’ll keep smelling the awesome cinnamon smell they add. This Triggers your food craving instinct. This smell carries you to their place to eat that’s so called CINNABON. But wait a second once you go shopping again and smell that same smell you remember the delicious CINNABON you ate. So you go buy it again. Every single time it works and they make sales because of this simple psychological concept called “Smell and Memory” .

This age I’m pointing to is called the “KNOWLEDGE-WORKER-AGE” in order to get to this age you must have followed all the previous steps along with its struggles to achieve this age-mindset. I have to admit most will never get out of their HUNTER-AGE as it’s the safest comfort age. It’s so simple so easy yet so fragile. I wrote this article not for the most it’s for the least who will hire the most. I must be honest every age is a struggle so if you are living comfortable there is something wrong. Remember never forget it’s not about making money it’s about making the world a better place. Helping humans to evolve and being appreciated on what they do and aiding them to follow the right path. You need to be strong in order to give advice. You can’t go wonder around telling people to make a difference while you are sitting doing nothing all day long except hoping to make a difference. You can hope your way through life while others work their whole life to achieve your hopes. But there is a point in this article which is you can work your whole life blind instead why not learn few simple steps to work smart.

Hadza individual has said, "Why should we plant when there are so many mongomongo nuts in the world?"  There will be vast amount of people thinking like this. Why plant my own tomatoes when I can buy them? And if you asked the one who says this; what do you do for a living? He or she will be a usual working hunter who gets up in the morning living in someone else’s dream or business to make a living. They get motivated during the day never estimated their next steps in life and at the end of the day they go telling you those words to crash your dreams with them. 

My advice to you; Find your tomato, plant it, wait for it, harvest it, sell it, turn it into a sauce based on people’s desire, sell it again, systematize your process, automate it, dig into a new pool of knowledge, relate that knowledge to your tomato, sell it, help humanity to be better with your tomato, leave a legacy full of tomatoes. And if you died I congratulate you on making a real impact on a vast society that could last for centuries and next generations will have someone to look up to and learn from. Thanks for reading.

P.S I don't sell tomatoes nor affiliated with any tomato shop :)