In Search Of Heroes Spreads Good News About Everyday, Real-Life Heroes Who Deserve Recognition For Their Good Works

Ralph Zuranski: Well what is your prospective on goodness, ethics and moral behavior?

Willie Crawford: And you haven’t had a chance to read my biography, If you read my biography you’ll learn that one of the struggles I went through was an addiction. It’s the most common addiction in the world, which is an alcohol addiction.

And so I had to go through counseling and when I went through that counseling at the expense of the military, they spent about $28,000.00 to recycle me if you will. I learned a lot about myself.

And I learned that a big part of the big problem with most of us is that we are not comfortable with who we are. And that we’ve somehow gotten out of kilter, and that it’s we need to reconnect with our higher power with a God of our own definition. That’s somebody that we feel comfortable with, somebody to me you know God’s a caring individual that loves me as I love my children.

And then we have to define our own world. For me ethics, morality and all those things are doing the right things. It’s looking at a situation and doing what I know is right. It’s doing the next right thing. It’s you know doing the right thing, it’s doing what would make me feel good if I knew no one was looking.

And so no matter what I’m involved in, and I’m involved in internet marketing, I get approached with a lot of deals that have the potential to make me 10, 20, $50,000.00, I turn a lot of those down because I look at the impact that’s it’s going to have on other people.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Willie Crawford: And I say no I can’t do that, for various reasons. But for me I have to feel good about what I do. The only person that really throws out of kilter if I were to do some of those things that I consider unethical would be and no one would know about it. But I cannot afford to have myself feel out of kilter or imbalanced.

So because of experiences that I’ve been through, because of training I’ve been through, counseling I’ve been through where I’ve been taught that you do the right thing.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Willie Crawford: It’s just who and what I am you know.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, well you’ve been a soldier and there’s always that question of what is a person willing to sacrifice their life for. What would you sacrifice your life for Willie?

Willie Crawford: I’ve often thought of that you know. I could be in a fast food restaurant where there was a hold up and I would sacrifice my life for the person standing next to me you know.

Its… its crazy because I have no desire to die, but I view… my world is different than a lot of people’s. You know so I’m willing to sacrifice my life for the person just standing next to me in line, especially if that person hasn’t lived as long as I have.

I look at the world and I look at humanity and I look at you know people that lived a thousand years before me and people that will live a thousand years after me and I see us all as one. I see us all as a continuum of that flow of energy and of genes you know.

It’s I don’t know, I probably getting to far out there but I look at the fact that right now I share the genes of somebody who lived 5,000 years before me. And 5,000 years in the future somebody else will probably have my genes and so I will continue to be there, whether I’m there or not. And so I have no fear of death and I would risk my life for anyone really.

You know I could be put in a hold up situation, I could be put in a situation where I would desire to die, I would hope that in the face of danger I could somehow pull through you know.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Willie Crawford: But I would risk my life for someone who was afraid you know to say in a hold up situation, I would step in and try to talk the holdup person out of harming them. It’s just me, it’s just I guess its my faith knows that even if I’m killed its not the end. So I don’t fear death.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, yeah.

Willie Crawford: And so but I was also trained as a soldier just step up and die. You know they were soldiers in previous wars who… I flew airplanes they knew that when they went on a mission that 80% of them would not return. They knew that, statistically they knew that and they did it anyway.

And I talked to people who were commanders who would look at their 18 to 20 year old troops, and know that 80% of them would not return. And had to say to them ok go to your job, which is you know these were their children you know.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Willie Crawford: And that was so in grained me that to me risk is, I have very… a very high threshold for risk which is good in business. Because I was trained by my mentor that you’re going to make mistakes, and so you get the mistakes out of the way.

I was trained that you’re going to fail and that you will learn from your failures. So you don’t fear those but you get them out of the way.
I was trained fail fast. If you know you’re going to fail you know go ahead and get it out of the way so you can find the successes.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, well isn’t that true.

Willie Crawford: You know that almost every major successful author out of every three books they’ve published that two were complete flops.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Willie Crawford: If they knew that, why not get those flops out of the way so they can go ahead and get that successful book done. And so I was trained to just go ahead and do it. Knowing that I mean most people when they look at internet marketers in particular and they look at the big successes they don’t know that these guys had failures.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah. Yeah.

Willie Crawford: But they did. And now their successes over shadow those failures. But you know, I don’t fear failure I just do it.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah well you know that is so true that everybody thinks that when they get their first project done that its going to be an incredible success.

But don’t even know that the majority of the people, the reason why they are so successful is they failed so many more times than anybody else that isn’t quiet as successful as that. It’s called failing forward.

The faster you fail, the more you’re going to find out what doesn’t work and what does work and the faster you’re going to become a success.

Willie Crawford: Right the whole key is learning from your failures. Dan Kennedy is one of my favorite copywriters and my favorite mentors. I spend thousands of dollars every year with Dan.

And when he was in the infomercial business, I think it was like one out of every eight infomercials that he did was a complete flop. Did the one pay for the eight failures? But it wasn’t looked, as a failure it was looked at as ok we discovered this didn’t work.

You know if it was the same company paying for those you know the one success and all the other failures it wasn’t bad but if it was different companies paying for the failures then that was bad.

But marketing is all about testing and you can’t just look at it as failure you look at it as learning experiences.