Have you seen this nun in your neighbourhood?
Ok, I’m going to do something I’m not supposed to do.
Ima get religious on yo ass.
Nah, just kidding. No religion and no politics in this space.
But I do want to talk about this nun I saw on the web the other day.
On some talent show in Italy, in her plain, dark-grey skirt suit and headgear, necklace with crucifix and all.
A real nun.
Boogying it out like you wouldn’t believe.
Had a call with a new client yesterday, for a new and fairly big project.
She’s an archeologist and anthropologist who built a fantastic game that teaches kids about history and society.
I don’t even want to think of how much money she put into developing it.
So – very logically – her first mission was “I need to start getting some sales in now. I’ve invested enough”.
But as she herself recognised, going for sales would be putting the cart before the horse.
Here’s the dealio.
Ran into that woman with the dog again yesterday.
Told me she had actually been looking around Google, trying to find a good manual for training a dog, but she couldn’t find anything that fit the bill.
Amazing result: someone actually followed free advice.
No, not because my worldview is wrong: free advice is still, largely and wholesale, undervalued and unused.
The actual reason she went and looked for a training manual is because of ‘pain’.
No, it’s not what you think. I don’t even do one-night stands.
What happened is some guy on the internet wanted to purchase some bedside furniture.
Except he made the tiniest typo – a space where there shouldn’t be one – and his statement turned into something completely different.
Have you seen this typo in your neighbourhood?
Yeah, if you’re below 30, you probably don’t get the reference to The Who’s rock opera Tommy.
And no, I didn’t go climbing blindfolded.
But last week the sun was right there up top on the crest of the wall, and I couldn’t see a damn thing when looking up.
I read a lot. Really a lot. It’s part of my work.
I’ve tried speed reading a few times, but never found a system that works for me.
Until last week, when I found a brand new site called Spritz.
These guys built a system so effective, I was speed reading at 600 words per minute almost instantly.
And, without any learning curve whatsoever.
Amazing. I WANT that app.
And quite likely, so do you, and millions of other people on the planet.
Talked to a friend last night about this mentorship program of mine.
He insists I shouldn’t offer it as a 3-month course, but instead offer reviews as one-off purchases.
That way the threshold is lower, the investment is in reach of more people, and I should be able to sell more of them, right?
Correct. I could put it up as a special offer and probably sell more of them.
Could. But won’t.
Several reasons.
For one thing, ‘selling more’ is not my goal.
Sure do love it when people make progress. Like Jimmy for example, who just finished his first month of membership and sent me this:
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“Your reviews were excellent and there’s a gold mine of information in them..so much so that I found, to my chagrin, that I can’t just skim them and apply the findings..they merit careful study and proper application…so you can guess what I’ll be doing during my lunch times for the next few weeks…so long Murakami… ”
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Once again, I’m hanging off the side of some mountain, somewhere south of Granada.
And once again, I ask myself: What in the hell am I doing here?
There’s no way up. There’s down, but – nah. Not yet.
I grapple, find a tiny ridge for my fingertips and clutch almightily.
Brice yells from below: “Your legs! Don’t try to hang from your hands – use your legs!”
I look at my feet – two pointed, hard-rubber shoe-tips, precariously placed on a 2cm-wide ridge. My legs tremble.
No more than 35 years old; thin and short. The girl, I mean. The dog was almost half her size, young and rambunctious. She was far too light to handle him.
“Nice dog”.
“You think so? Have him, take him home. He’s driving me crazy.”
Her head lolloped back as the beast tugged on the leash, yanking her shoulder forward.
“He’s too strong and he just will not listen”.
“Yeah, I see what you mean. He’s fearful too, see? The way he cowers and barks at anyone closer than 40 meters. I wonder why.”
“This client I had last year, a dog trainer – he has a pretty good training manual on the web. It’s a free download, pretty good stuff. It’ll show you exactly how to educate him.”
She blinked at me, not getting it.
“It’s all psychology, you see?
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