🏡 Don’t Build A House On Atlantic Avenue
Atlantic Avenue is a really stupid place to build a house.
The rent costs $150 each and the rent with 1 house is only $110.
It’s also a really unlikely place for someone to land on the board, so the opportunities to get rent payments is way lower than other properties.
You can still buy the property and sell it to someone else who wants it, but use it as leverage—don’t invest in it.
What does the game Monopoly have to do with living a happy and productive life?
You have a limited amount of time, energy and resources.
It’s up to you to choose the projects and missions you will spend your time on.
You already have a lot of odds against you.
Building anything is hard enough all by itself.
If you’re going to invest in something, it’s important to increase your probability of success.
Monopoly is pretty straightforward and there are a billion statistical analyses and strategies you can dig up online.
Life and work are less straightforward and they’re up to you.
This isn’t about real estate, business, or board games—this is about focusing on the known game-changing factors that actually matter and increasing your chances of success.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started:
What are other people doing in your industry?
What are the characteristics of the successful big league players?
What might you do differently to stand out?
What is it that you do that is scarce and valuable?
What problem are you actually solving?
(Hint: it’s not that a customer has 4 widgets and they need 5, it’s because they’re lonely, hungry, or they have low self esteem. You need to dig deep into the basic mechanisms of behavior!)
2 Minute Action
Write a new email headline and A/B test it with your audience.
Steal someone else’s marketing concept and test the offer with your customers.
Do the math to figure out how many other competitors you have and look realistically at your chances of success. (FYI, If you’re starting a business in any industry, your odds are 1:10 right out of the gate, on average)
This Prestigious Award That No One Knows About
Have you ever heard of the Gold Award?
The Gold Award is the highest achievement within the Girl Scouts of the USA, and it’s only earned by Senior and Ambassador Girl Scouts.
Only 5.4% of eligible Girl Scouts successfully earn the Gold Award.
It’s not easy.
But who knows that?
If you had a “Jesse” with a “Gold Award” on their resume and then you also had another “Jesse” but they had “Eagle Scout” on their resume . . . who would you hire if you had to choose?It’s simple.
This problem is two-fold.
Its . . .1) a branding/marketing problem and2) a straight up sexism problem.
There are things you can control right now and there are things you can’t.
The marketing part of the problem is solvable relatively quickly.The other one will take multiple generations to eradicate.
2 Minute Action
Here’s a framework I learned from a mentor last year and I use it all the time:CAPACorrective Action (what will I do right now to make this better?)Preventative Acrion (how will I stop this from happening again?)For the Girl Scouts it’s straightforward.Take 2 minutes to look at a problem with CAPA today.It should NOT take more than 2 minutes to run through this exercise.If it takes more than 2 minutes you may need a consultant or expert.
[SERIES] 6/7 Unpopular Belief: Get Famous
Famous people are frauds.Famous people are vain.Famous people are selfish.This is post 6 of 7 Unpopular Beliefs Series.
Get Famous!
Influence is power.
We discussed how money can be useful in making change in part 1.Influence is just as powerful.Marketers use celebrities to advertise their products.Why? Because we trust them. We've built a relationship with celebrities over the course of their careers.I'm including politicians in this, as well.The more people you spread your message to, the more you can help people.
"The opposite of getting famous is hiding."- Derek Sivers
Mass media is mass communication.
Fred Rogers did it.Jim Henson did it.Sesame Workshop does it all the time.Getting famous means mastering media and communicating your message. Getting famous means being a practitioner of influence, not merely a wielder of it.
2 Minute Action
What networks do you have now?Instagram? Snapchat? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter?For me, it's email.What's your message?Today is a great day to publish a random act of kindness or a resource that can help people.And what's great is that it doesn't need to take more than 2 minutes.