simple Nodes Prosper - Letter Two of the series If you're so Smart, How Come You Ain't Rich?

Simple Nodes Prosper Letter Two of the Series: “If You’re so Smart, How Come You Ain’t Rich?” - a money handbook strictly for the Nerds by Peter Harris, MA (process philosophy) serial entrepreneur, perennial student, idealist and ‘Wizard of Eutopia’. Published by Eutopia Press Smashwords edition 20th April 2013 Contents Dear nerd KISC, KISC The CEO Principle BE ONE THING Simple Nodes rule the Net - and Rome. Next Steps About Eutopia Press Orders and Feedback Dear brother/sister Nerd, KISC, KISC! You may have heard of the KISS principle - ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’. Well this is the Keep It Simple, Clever! principle especially for us nerds. Not to keep it simple is the KISS of death socially and therefore financially. I should know, I’ve been doing it forever… But no more. With his back against the wall, this worm has turned. In Letter One I hit you with the startling revelation that in order to prosper you have to ‘translate’ (‘dumb down’) your message or offering so it means something to people who just don’t care about the abstract level or even realize it exists. These people who live and move and have their being almost exclusively on the social and biological level (still) hold the purse-strings. And they don’t like to be confused by some jumped-up nerd. Or made to feel stupid… Or to think that you think they’re stupid. After all, who’s driving the BMW? It’s cruel hard, but better to have a good cry, accept it as the way things, presently and for the foreseeable future, ARE, and then go on to do well in the world, and use your success to buy you more time with those who do get and love what you get and love, doing what you love to do instead of grubbing around for the crumbs in a society that treats you like a dog.... In letter one I said that your problem is not that you aren’t good enough for ‘them’, you’re too good - or to be precise, you’re too much! Simplify, simplify, simplify! Less is more, if the bandwidth is small. And believe me, the bandwidth/tolerance on the social level for anything relating to the realm of ideas is very low! I’ve found doing posters a good practice in this. I always start with say 10 statements on the poster. Then people tell me it’s ‘crowded’ and ‘confusing’ and ‘wordy’. So I chop and chop down to two or three, and suddenly even I have to admit, ‘Wow, that’s nice and uncluttered! Pity about all the missing information though...’ Then I remind myself, once I’ve grabbed them they will go and read more on the website, or ring me. Step by step, no information overload along the way, and you’ll have them eating out of your hand. It’s the 80-20 rule again. Cut the 80%. Save it for the next instalments. So, repackage your BIG, COMPLEX offering into MANY, SIMPLE gifts. Clarify by simplifying each offering by about 80%. Practice on Twitter - 150 characters… if that’s not an urgent message to reduce the thought-bite size, I don’t know what is! The CEO Principle: Connect Early and Often Avoid at all costs that trap of traps, the nerd-pitfall of overplanning and undertesting. Do a ‘rapid prototype’ of your conceptually exciting offering and take it to real people (jaded cynical social creatures, not your excitable-by-clever-new ideas nerd friends!). Then do another, and take that to them. And so on, until they really respond with a ‘Wow!’ So, do things in small iterations. Otherwise known as ‘One step at a time’. Also ‘Ready. Fire. Aim’ (There’s a business book by that very title.) We nerds are great at mapping the whole thing in advance, with complex schemes that cost us time and money and huge amounts of bandwidth, before we’ve fronted up in the marketplace. When in Rome, sell to the Romans. And we are in Rome. You may think, ‘This doesn’t apply to me; I am pitching my wares to the academics’ or the highly educated top executives or doctors or other intelligent professionals. Well, look closer and I bet you will have to admit, the social and instinctual rules there too, mostly. Just more subtly, as I said in letter one. Or not… Look at the kind of perks and free stuff that drug companies tempt doctors with. The temptation to overplan is especially irresistible to nerds for three main reasons: first, because we are shy of going out into the big bad word of society and maybe being laughed at or attacked, so we want to think of everything and make it perfect, flawless; secondly because we are so good at thinking and analysing and love to get it all worked out; and thirdly and fatally, because we REALLY DON’T KNOW ANYTHING about how ordinary folks are going to respond. WE AREN’T ... - tailieumienphi.vn