Greg's Right FIT #454

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Persuading
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Persuading

• Start work with clients by looking in the mirror and asking if we have their best interest in mind. If the trust they have in us is going to be subjective, we might as well focus on the one thing we can control, our intent. 
• Don't confuse investment dollars with idea validation. A good reminder when you see news about big dollars being invested in a niche market.
• Prospect to the right audience. Use niches for better results. It takes more time and more effort, but has a bigger payoff in the long run. 
• Stop worrying about the perfect sales process or the best sales language. Start worrying about the gap between what you know about how your prospects buy, and what you want to know about how they buy. Narrowing that gap gets you closer to the perfect sales process by default. 

Being Human - Advantages

Fortune cookie wisdom

Advantages have a half life.

Any marketplace advantage you own will be short-lived, so make the best of it while it lasts, while planning for its future obsolescence. Use your good fortune to get on to the next stage. 
 

Random Stuff

"It'd be tragic
If those evil robots win"
– Flaming Lips, "Yoshimimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1"

One of my worldviews is it’s too late to become a child prodigy, but it’s never too late to get better at a new skill. Keep learning. If we don’t, we’ll be run out by robots! 

In that spirit, this week I tried to learn the skill of changing the belts on my old truck. Armed with a few YouTube videos and $100 worth of parts and tools, I get to work. Why this week? A good friend's mother has passed, the funeral is 500 miles away, and I don't want my 15-year-old belt to break on the trip. The mechanic mentioned a belt-change the last time I had it in for service, so he jinxed me. The belt breaking thought is in my head. There's no time to take it in, so I'll learn how to do it myself.

From the videos I know the biggest challenge is that the belts are hiding behind the radiator fan. Getting that radiator fan off is tough. It's a reverse thread and as the fan spins it naturally tightens so it won't fly off. 15 years of tightening, plus a little rust and grit makes for a challenging removal.

I get the tools on Friday, but don't touch it until Monday afternoon. It won't budge. When I try to break the nut, the whole assembly turns because the only resistance comes from a little bit of belt tension. More videos. Ah! I'm missing another tool that will hold the bolts and give me some tension. It arrives overnight, and I get back to it on Tuesday morning. And Tuesday mid-morning. And Tuesday lunch. And after lunch. Nothing is moving but some skin off my knuckles.

I watch another video. This guy uses an air chisel to loosen everything. I don't have one, but a friend does. I borrow it and follow the video very carefully. No movement. Air tools are scary. But the next suggested solution, a blow torch, is scarier. I am making an appointment for the truck next week. 

I should have bought a plane ticket. 

Maybe, somewhere in the folds of my gray matter something good happened, but right now it feels like when the robots come, they are going to have an easy time with me.