I had my cousins visit me the other day and we decided to get down to Huntington Beach for an afternoon stroll on the Pier.
Beautiful day with a nice breeze. But, that is like any other day down here… 🙂
The cool breeze was gently massaging our faces while we were walking down the pier talking about anything you can ever imagine. (Not business, trust me). By the way, I decided that from now on I will be getting out of my office at least 3 times a week to get in touch with nature.
So, we were just minding our own business, when I see this guy running along the edge of the pier with a fishing pole in his hands.
Someone was running behind him yelling: “he caught a shark”.
Yeah, Right! someone else said…
Naturally I started following that guy to see what all this “noise” was about.
Sure enough he caught a big fish but his Fishing Line was too thin to pull that thing out of the water. So all he would do, is keep running around with the fishing pole trying to get the fish tired I guess.
All of the sudden this other guy runs all the way from the other side of the pier, with a big fishing net attached to a long rope.
He slowly lowered the net pretty close to where the fish was circling (the fish was still hooked on the fishing line). So the guy with the pole started moving the fish around trying to get it into the net.
After a few minutes of pulling the string like a puppet, the fish finds itself into the net and the guy started pulling up.
It was heavy.
It was a shark indeed.
After a few moments the shark was on the pier jumping up and down.
That whole event reminded me how business works in a very similar way.
A few points:
- Be Prepared. When you go fishing for customers, Make sure you are prepared to handle higher volume of sales, support, traffic, etc. Many launches lost a lot of money due to their servers going down for hours. Many businesses had to refund tons of sales because they couldnt reply to their support tickets, and so forth
- The power of specialized help. Don’t be afraid to seek specialized help when you need it. Maybe you know where your customers are, maybe you catch the small fish, but you dont know or you dont have the caliber to pull in the big fish. Ask for help from the experts.
- The power of leverage. You can surely pull a lot bigger fish out of the ocean with a thin fishing line when you can leverage its power with the power of the net. Software can be used as a leverage. (for example: MyDD from www.MyDigitalDispatch.com can help you sell and deliver thousands of digital products on ebay in an hour and upsell those customers immediately. Something that would be impossible without this leverage)
I know you want to see some pictures here dont you?
Ok, here we go:
This is the picture where the shark is still in the water (can you see its outline?):
Here is the shark being pulled out of the water:
Business Lesson #4:
When you see an opportunity knocking, take advantage of it, because it will go away before you realize it.
How many opportunities do you think I ll have to actually grab a live shark by the tail and show him MY TEETH?
Well, I didnt let this one go 🙂
here it comes:
By the way, the shark was about 4 feet long and was legal to keep. But for those concerned out there, the shark is still swimming in Southern California because we threw him back! (proof below)
Business Lesson #5: People will NOT believe everything you say. The
burden of proof is upon you. Pictures/screenshots are a good way to prove that what you say is true. (Do you have a doubt that I grabbed a live shark by its tail?”
Please post your comments and thoughts below. Let me know what you think.
Till next time,
Partner to Your Success,
Socrates Socratous
www.MyDigitalDispatch.com
P.S. I ll be soon posting some pictures from our seminar in Ohio (which took place last week). For now, Please post your comments below.
Challenge: Can you find more business lessons from this story? Please post those below too. Thanks
Posted by: Socrates Socratous Sep 30th, 2007
