Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

Sales letter tips from a 6 year old 

In 1482 Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter to get a job.  

Da Vinchi said things in his letter like:

I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy.

Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry.

I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them.

This is some PT Barnum shiz-nit right here!  Most people call this a “resume”.  I call this a sales letter.  Any kind of letter that persuades someone to do something is a sales letter. Some people stress over them but even my daughter wrote one when she was 6 or 7.  

She asked The Tooth Fairy for money in exchange for her tooth.  That’s a sales letter baby, because the Tooth Fairy can say yes or no or give my daughter less than the $105 she’s asking for.  There is one more simple thing that my daughter could have added to her letter.  Let’s take a look at da Vinchi’s example.

“I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy.”

Unlike my daughter da Vinci added what his bridges would do for them.   This is important because it helps people visualize the end result.  A dentist can write an ad or email copy about fixing cavities but that’s boring.  Better to talk about how you’ll feel afterwards with no pain or how you can eat apples again…

Yes, I know Pfizer isn’t launching a new cholesterol med with a few sentences of type like this.  Their sales letter might be 30 pages long but the rules are the same…  You need to answer these three questions:

Who you are, what do you have, and why should they care?

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

PS  Here’s a link to the whole letter:  https://gizmodo.com/leonardo-da-vincis-hand-written-resume-will-make-you-fe-1684441362

Get more creative by being lazy

All three of my kids are lazy.  

Like, won’t even bend over to pick up a sock lazy.  My son, The Peanut, will kick the sock until it’s close enough to the hamper.  Then he’ll pick it up with his toe so he doesn’t have to bend over.

What kind of healthy 9 year old doesn’t have the energy to pick up a sock?  We laugh at this stuff at my house but you could learn a lot from The Peanut.  

You need to be like him.  You need to learn to be lazy.  

And I’m not talking about binge-watching Stranger Things and eating bon bons either. Check out this passage from Richard Koch’s book, The 80/20 Principle.

“There are only four types of officer.  First, there are the lazy, stupid ones.  Leave them alone, they do no harm…  Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones.  They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered.  Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones.  These people are a menace and must be fired at once.  They create irrelevant work for everybody.  Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones.  The are suites for the highest office.”

General Von Manstein on the Geman Officer Corps

I learned me and my kids are intelligent and lazy.  My kids had to get it from somewhere, right?  

After college I thought I needed to work hard.  Do, do do.  Go, go, go, go, go.  Sleep is for wussies.  Look at my goals, look at what I wanna do!  Blah, blah, blah.  

Eventually I came back to my natural state of being intelligent and lazy.  Why?  Because this is where the GOOD creation happens.  When your energy isn’t split juggling, the good ideas come to you and you figure out how to do things smarter with less effort.  

Don’t wanna be lazy with me?  It’s more common than you think.

What is Uber other than a lazier way to get a taxi?  You can call a cab company, get stuck on hold, and endlessly wait for it to show up.  Or you can use a smartphone app and know everything within about 60 seconds.  

Sounds lazy to me.

When Apple released the iPod they marketed 1,000 songs in your pocket. You no longer had to look for CDs or exchange MP3’s in your digital music player.  Having 1,000 songs in your pocket allowed you to upload  all your songs ONCE and never touch them again. 

Sound lazy to me…

Lazy=simplifying.  What could you do away with from your practice, process, or way of doing your service that would make your life AND your client’s life better?

Go for a walk.  Think about it.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

P.S.  My wife is a hard-working intelligent one.  WE, drive her crazy.  She’s learning though.  😉

Open. That. Letter.

Last year my wife received a FedEx letter when she wasn’t home. 

It was a fat one too, it probably weighed a couple of pounds.  She doesn’t do much business from home so it’s odd for her to receive letters like this.  I was curious.  

I looked at the sender and saw it was from a law office.  We don’t normally open each other’s mail but that was about to change TODAY!  You hear stories about couples in seemingly good relationships and one day the partner seeks a divorce as quick and easy as Taco Tuesday.  

Was I going to be one of those statistics?  Nope.

The paperwork in my hands was for a corporation she started.  I had no idea.  When my wife got home I told her I was freaking out and opened her letter and we laughed.  My wife has always been into rescuing pets and she decided to incorporate her own animal rescue.  I thought this was totally cool and I was happy for her.  I did tell her to give me the heads up the next time she requests paperwork from a lawyer’s office though…

What’s the point of me telling you this?  No point really, but I’ll leave you with Kody Bateman’s words.  “The stories in your mind become the stories of your life.”  If you don’t like your thoughts, clean em up.  No thought lives in your mind rent free.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

Deliver us from compromising

If you’ve seen the movie Deliver Us From Eva, you’ll know uncompromising is bad.  You don’t want to do it.  Not to Eva, not to yourself, not to anyone.

Gabrielle Union stars in the movie as Eva, a restaurant health inspector that’s tough as nails with brass balls.  And yes, I know Gabrielle is a girl… 

Eva is inspecting a restaurant and she tells the manager what she found (something gross) and why she’s writing them up.  The manager fears her report so he asks her… Why do you have to be so damn uncompromising?  She hissed that she’s being uncompromising so people’s tax dollars aren’t wasted.  

So people can eat in restaurants without eating chicken fried rat…

Or biting into a bacon, lettuce, tomato, and toe nail sandwich.  

It gets worse, but it’s hilarious.  Here’s where you come in…  

If wanna get your side hustle going or if you wanna take your skills to the next level?  Being uncompromising is how to up your game.  When I was sick of selling insurance and I decided to grow my art skills I drew every morning until my infant daughter woke up.  Some mornings I had two hours to myself, some mornings I had 10 minutes.  

I never knew how much time I’d have but I never stopped.  Whether I had 20 minutes or an hour, it didn’t matter.  I maximized it the best I could.  

Most people approach their personal time like new year’s resolutions.  They say, ’I’m gonna cut carbs, ‘fat, sugar, and processed food out of my diet to lose weight’.  Within a few days your spouse can’t stand you and you’re ready to attack the neighbor kid for his juice box.

You can get all ambitious and do an hour or two a day but I suggest you start SMALL.  Start with one minute a day.  You read that right.  ONE MINUTE.  If you want to be ambitious do five minutes a day.  The secret is focusing on making your ‘me time” a daily consistent habit with focused attention.  Your time should be like the Drake song, it’s ALL ME.  

No phone.

No email.

No distractions.  

Not from your kids, not from your family, no one.  The demands of your world can wait 60 seconds.  And once you master that, go for two minutes.  Rinse and repeat.  It will get easier and easier.  Take it one bite at a time like a well-seasoned Kobe steak.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

P.S.  Here’s the link that scene from Deliver Us from Eva:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-fVCOw4hA

Sometimes it feels like, somebody’s watching me

I got a Facebook friend request.  

I ignored it for about a week.  …or two.   The request came from someone I didn’t know.

I don’t mind friending strangers if they seem sincere.  This gal on the other hand, was hustlin’.  I looked at her profile and it said something about taking coaches to $20k a month or something like that.  

All I could think was, here we go again…  [insert eye roll here…]

The moment I ‘friended’ her she started asking me questions about my biz and what I do.  I received an invitation to her Facebook group too.  I could have ran for the hills but like watching a bad movie, I wanted to see how it was going to end.  As Jim Rohn said you can learn from success but you can also learn from failure.

Keep in mind, I’m not mad her.  I’m all for the hustle.  I’d rather see you do it wrong than not all.  There’s tons of people who have the same dreams that you do that are perfectly happy sitting on their couch watching The Office reruns.

I have no idea if this lady is ‘successful’ in this approach or not but I wouldn’t touch this technique with a 10 foot pole.  It would be like inviting you to my son’s birthday party then when you get here try to sell you life insurance.

It’s sleazy.  

Kinda Shallow.

And totally unnecessary.  

It’s an old Business Paradigm maneuver.  Let me ask you some questions so I can later tell you why you need to buy what I’m selling.  It’s like the desperate guy at the club at 2am trying to say whatever he can to get laid.

It’s the same approach made famous by salesmen in tacky suits at used car lots.

When you have a prospect, especially if it’s a cold one, make sure you have a good soft approach.  One technique I learned from Eric Worre is to start with a compliment.  Had she started with saying something nice about what I do, or my kids, or something else on my Facebook page, I may have taken her friend request seriously.  

But she didn’t.

Hell, even Trader Joes asks me about my dog when I buy dog food or treats!

It comes down to this.  If you want people to be interested in you, be interested in them.  

First.

https://www.adamstreet.net/

Adam