Are You Someone’s ‘Ambassador of Quan?’
What is“quan?”
Ever see the film, “Jerry Maguire?”
Jerry Maguire (played by Tom Cruise) is a highly successful sports agent. He’s got it all. A gorgeous fiancée. A powerful career. Lots of money.
Until one day, he came up against the wall. He started to question everything — his purpose, his values, his place in the sporting world.
And he decides to write a manifesto.
Now when this movie came out, manifestos really weren’t a “thing.”
It was 1996.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Ph.D. students at Stanford University and their brainchild, Google, was still on the drawing board.
“The Cluetrain Manifesto,” which has inspired people like Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and Michael Wolff, was still churning in the minds of its authors. The landmark book wasn’t published until three years later — 1999 on the web and then in book form in 2000.
But “Jerry Maguire” didn’t know all that.
All he knew is that he wanted to make a difference. He didn’t want to just use people and realized there was something bigger out there. He just didn’t know what it was.
After hammering out an audacious mission statement, Jerry was shocked to find that not everyone shared his newfound commitment to being different. So he left his employer to figure it out.
He only had one client who agreed to still use him as an agent. Rod Tidwell.
Now Rod was a bit of a hot dog. Egotistical, brash, and with him… it wasn’t “there is no ‘I’ in team,”… there was no “team” in Rod. He was all about himself.
Jerry was determined to work with him and did.
And he succeed using one of Zig Ziglar’s golden nuggets.
Maybe you’ve heard of Zig’s valuable piece of advice:
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
Here’s a memorable scene from Jerry Maguire (NSFW at the end):
What Jerry wanted to do was genuinely help Tidwell reach his goals. But he had to find a way to show Tidwell the right path in order to succeed.
To do that, he became, in Tidwell’s eyes — his “Ambassador of Quan.”
You see, Tidwell coined a new term (pun intended).
He called what he wanted, “quan.” And it embodied more than just money.
Rod Tidwell: Because it’s not just the money I deserve. It’s not just the “coin.” It’s the… — “the quan”.
Jerry Maguire: That’s your word?
Rod Tidwell: Yeah, man, it means love, respect, community… and the dollars too. The package. The quan.
Jerry Maguire: But how did you get “quan?”
Rod Tidwell: I got there from “coin,” dude. Coin, coin… kwaaaan.
Love.
Respect.
Community.
Think about those three things the next time you put together your game plan to reach your audience.
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About the Author
I’m Mary Rose ‘Wildfire’ Maguire, author, direct response copywriter, digital marketing consultant, and brand and email marketing fangirl. Tireless advocate for finding pain points and testing response. David Ogilvy is my invisible mentor, along with John Caples and Claude C. Hopkins. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn yakking endlessly about marketing. And especially on my website, maryrosemaguire.com.
