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2025-05-07 05:04:17

Key Takeaways

1. Make a dream come true
2. When you make it a dream come true for yourself, it’ll be a dream come true for someone else, too.
3. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.
4. Present each new idea or improvement to the world. If multiple people are saying, “Wow! Yes! I need this! I’d be happy to pay you to do this!” then you should probably do it. But if the response is anything less, don’t pursue it.
5. Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision — even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone — according to what’s best for your customers.
6. It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.
7. If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff.
8. Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company.
9. We all need a place to play. Kids need playgrounds and sandboxes. Musicians need an instrument. Mad scientists need a laboratory. Those of us with business ideas? We need a company. Not for the money, but because it’s our place to experiment, create, and turn thoughts into reality. We need to pursue our intrinsic motivation. We have so many interesting ideas and theories. We need to try them!

What I got out of it

1. Derek Sivers’ Anything You Want is a refreshing short read that reminds entrepreneurs to focus on happiness, generosity, and building their own perfect world, not just chasing profits.

The post Anything You Want by Derek Sivers appeared first on The Rabbit Hole .

2025-05-07 04:40:52

Key Takeaways

1. Being Chief Everything Officer is not about doing everything. It is about being prepared for everything and being willing to give everything.
2. The first is the need for a deep level of detachment. Oftentimes, entrepreneurs become emotionally attached to their original mission, and when the market is saying clearly it’s time to change, they struggle to let go of their original dream. Attachment makes change impossible. Meditation has helped me cultivate a stronger ability to detach.
3. “Prove it, then scale it” is a mantra that I love as it is simple yet powerful. It is both efficient, and effective.
4. A few principles had helped me get to this point, the foremost being: Transparency breeds trust.
5. Don’t over-engineer culture. Culture is a symptom, not a cause. A culture emerges organically, based on how a Chief Everything Officer makes decisions, communicates progress and challenges, and organizes the business. I believe it is an unconscious thing that happens. In companies, big or small, the leader sets the tone and pace, regardless if they are doing so intentionally or accidentally.
6. was very binary about it. “In a software business, there are only two activities that I value. Talking with clients or building and servicing the product. Everything else is a waste of time.”
7. Twice, I attempted to merge this group of advisors around a single table. Both times it ended in disaster. Imagine a world class footballer, a top-tier golfer, and an Olympic swimmer discussing strategy: each one a giant in their field, but each speaking different languages. I realized that their strength, their real value, was in one-on-one interactions. Their advice was like dishes on a tasting menu: best savored individually rather than mixed. Instead of building a board early on, I learned it’s better to cultivate advisors who are strong in specific areas. Think of them as solo artists rather than a band. The dynamics of such relationships are fluid; you never really know who’ll strike the right chord, when, and for how long.
8. The first was to recognize that the board is there to work for me, not the other way around. This mindset meant that I was unafraid to ask them to do things for me and the team. It also helped create a dynamic that was helpful, encouraging, and positive for me. This is not what I often hear from other CEOs, who don’t look forward to their board meetings because they put the board members in the boss’s seat.
9. The decisions I regret the most in business have been when my emotions were out of check and I had felt imbalanced. Emotional regulation is often talked about and rarely acted on.
10. My number one tool for releasing and processing my emotions has been crying. I discovered the art of crying for myself about half-way through my CEO journey. And it has stayed with me to this day. I cry at least once a week, sometimes more often. Sometimes from a place of frustration or fear, oftentimes nowadays from a place of joy and gratitude.
11. I’ve learned that true contentment and peace come from internal alignment and growth, not external achievements. I feel satisfied knowing I tried and gave it my all.

What I got out of it

1.  Chief Everything Officer is an honest, inspiring memoir that shows what it really takes to build, lead, and adapt through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship—making it a must-read for anyone carrying the weight of big dreams.

The post Chief Everything Officer by Kunal Gupta appeared first on The Rabbit Hole .

2025-04-01 01:13:27

Key Takeaways

1. When our attention is subject to mechanized appropriation, through the pervasive use of hyperpalatable stimuli? On this first view, what is at stake in our cultural moment would seem to be the conditions for the possibility of achieving a coherent self.
2. A single retinal image is certainly not adequate to the task of specifying the world, but the visual stimulus received over time by an observer in motion is adequate, Gibson argues, and so on his account the whole motivation for conceiving perception as involving inference and computation collapses. This is completely revolutionary. The brain does not have to construct a representation of the world. The world is known to us because we live and act in it, and accumulate experience.
3. We think through the body.
4. This brings up another uncanny fact about motorcycle steering: the bike goes wherever your gaze is focused. Most important, if your eyes lock on some hazard in the road, you will surely hit it.
5. Gibson’s most interesting and controversial point is that what we perceive, in everyday life, is not pure objects of the sort a disinterested observer would perceive, but rather “affordances.” The affordances of the environment are “what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.”
6. Affordances lie in the fit between an actor and his or her environment. When that relationship is mediated by a prosthetic, such as a motorcycle, it changes the field of objects that we perceive and how we perceive them.
7. For experiences to become part of the secure, sedimented foundation of a skill, they must be criticized. Other people (and the resources of language) are indispensable. Without them, your experiences are partial, and may sediment as idiosyncratic bad habits.
8. Getting things right requires triangulating with other people.
9. Imagining what could happen is an important role for the conscious mind, so it must stay involved. Being in a state of “flow” without such worries sometimes makes you feel like Superman, but it is easy to flow yourself right into the truck that has drifted into your lane around the blind curve ahead.
10. The role for the conscious mind is “alert watchfulness, without meddling.” It is “an unstable condition, which degrades all too easily into either a complete lack of watchfulness or too much involvement.”
11. The world in which we acquire skill as embodied agents is precisely that world in which we are subject to the heteronomy of things; the hazards of material reality. To pursue the fantasy of escaping heteronomy through abstraction is to give up on skill, and therefore to substitute technology-as-magic for the possibility of real agency.
12. According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own. The clearest contrast to the narcissist that I can think of is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly. He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical.
13. The fantasy of autonomy comes at the price of impotence. With this comes fragility—that of a self that can’t tolerate conflict and frustration. And this fragility, in turn, makes us more pliable to whoever can present the most enthralling representations that save us from a direct confrontation with the world.
14. Emily Anthes writes that among traffic engineers, “in the last decade or so, a few iconoclasts have begun making roads more hazardous—narrowing them, reducing visibility, and removing curbs, center lines, guardrails, and even traffic signs and signals. These roads, research shows, are home to significantly fewer crashes and traffic fatalities.”

What I got out of it

1. The idea of affordances really resonated (what we’re paying attention to and what our skills, background, interests are) shapes what we see around us. It’s not about the theoretical, but the lived experience that shapes what we see and how we live.

The post The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford appeared first on The Rabbit Hole .

2025-02-18 23:20:01

Key Takeaways

1. So what is it? Instead of focusing on rules, Taking Children Seriously focuses on fostering understanding. Parenting is the process of supporting a child until they understand the world well enough that they can support themselves. What is the best way to foster understanding? To provide freedom and security for a person’s creativity to discover how the world works. Rules limit freedom, and hence understanding, and therefore impair the parenting project.
2. Taking your kids seriously gives them reasons to take you seriously as well.
3. The biggest difference between our household and other households is how our kids eat, sleep, and use screens. At first glance, screens don’t seem as fundamental as food and sleep, but they are—perhaps even more so. That’s because screens are bound up with attention, which might be the most basic element of our autonomy. When we lose everything, the last thing to go is control of our attention. At the heart of adult resistance to screens seems to be the idea that adults have a right, even a duty, to control what children pay attention to. Attention is the simplest manifestation of what a person cares about, and intruding on their attention always signals that their values are less important than the intruder’s values.
4. Nearly every misconception about children in general is revealed by how adults manage children’s use of screens. All of the usual tropes are at work: kids can’t be trusted, they don’t know what’s good for them, it’s dangerous, it’s bad for them, it’s addictive, it corrupts them.
5. The truth is that when kids are pursuing their interests, they are always learning, even if adults can’t see it. Unfortunately, when it comes to adults assessing the merits of what their kids are doing, seeing is believing. When a child is constructing a jigsaw puzzle, an adult can see the physical manifestation of the child’s mind at work. The child’s mental effort is on display as she tries to connect a piece, fails, rotates it, and tries again. The adult can hear her groan when a piece isn’t fitting and sense her joy when she figures it out. But when that same child is watching a cartoon, that same adult may take the kid’s vacant look and physical activity as surefire signs that they’re watching a fertile mind turning to mush.
6. Boredom is bad for the same reasons pain is bad. Both indicate suffering. Both indicate a problem that needs solving. And neither is a virtue in its own right. We wouldn’t arbitrarily expose a child to pain with the argument that pain is an inevitable part of life that they need to “learn to deal with.” Such cruelty teaches children that, not only are we indifferent to their suffering, but they should accept their suffering as well.
7. My goal in this chapter is to show that enforcing rules on children produces so many problems that you’ll become interested in seeking an alternative. Rules-based parenting always damages children’s relationship with their parents and with themselves, and it introduces deep and persistent confusions about the world.
8. Not all of the rules in a kid’s life are obligatory, such as the rules of a game. The rules of chess or baseball are special because they have been found to be so much fun that children comply with them voluntarily, and that makes all the difference. Everyone can opt out, but they willingly engage because these rules solve problems for all parties.
9. One last type of beneficial rule is a boundary. Boundaries are rules or limitations that people voluntarily impose on themselves. When I set a boundary on myself, I am declaring how much of my own space, time, and resources I’m willing to offer others. The nice thing about boundaries is that other people, including kids, can opt out of them.
10. This is the key: doing something without the presence of enforcement or threats thereof is one of the best indicators that a person has a good understanding of what that thing is for. By forcing things, the parent is virtually guaranteeing that they can’t possibly determine whether or not their kid understands. In fact, forcing the kid to act under duress only hinders their ability to understand why the thing is worth doing in the first place.
11. In the adult world, we solve our own problems. From the most trivial to the most consequential, we are the authors of our own lives, or at least we aspire to be. Given this aspiration, it’s hard to think of a more important gift to give our children than the confidence to be the authors of their own lives, to acquire the knowledge, skills, and assertiveness to take ownership of their own affairs. And this reveals the fourth Foul of enforcing rules—it confuses kids by teaching them that there are external authorities who know the answers about how to live.
12. And I’m not saying it’s easy or that we should expect 100 percent success in safely preserving our kids’ autonomy. I’m saying it is an achievable ideal worth striving for, not just in select areas but in every domain of life. And when preserving autonomy is a top priority, not only can we get quite good at it, but our kids become more open to trusting our input. When they know we are not trying to take control and demote them to a minor role in their own lives, they are more open to our suggestions.
13. Enforced rules are manipulative falsehoods about the world.
14. I resolved that, no matter what, I would never turn my kids away if they wanted to “help out around the house.” Even if it slows me down or creates a lot more work overall, involving them voluntarily is an opportunity for them to learn to value things like cleaning and repairing.
15. Discipline and Punishment We never do either. The closest I’ll get is with our six-year-old when I tell her that aggravating her younger siblings makes work for me. Rather than discipline, this is more of an appeal to her to be more understanding and forgiving. One peculiarity I’ve noticed is how difficult it is to convey to a child the idea of being understanding, of giving others some slack or the benefit of the doubt. It’s interesting that such a crucial concept is so difficult to put into words that a child can understand. At first, I thought this was a deficiency of language, but now I think it shows how the norms of civility are really quite subtle. Discipline and punishment run roughshod over these subtleties and make it that much more difficult for children to discover them. Discipline and punishment, and coercion in general, never get kids to do anything. Instead, they raise the costs of doing something else. There are many ways to raise the costs of pursuing alternatives, from simple beatings or threats of beatings, to shaming, withholding possessions or denying privileges, or sequestering them to listen to lectures. If a person does something because alternatives are made too unpleasant, they tend to do the bare minimum in order to obtain relief. They do it to satisfy the disciplinarian, not themselves. The resulting learning is thin, based on a performance, and only loosely connected with other knowledge. Discipline and punishment show us what Taking Children Seriously is not. Rather than raising costs to get a certain behavior, Taking Children Seriously lowers costs to get understanding. Specifically, costs are lowered in order to open up freedom for curiosity to search for and discover knowledge, and knowledge that works forms an understanding. Parents are cost reducers and freedom promoters.
16. Yes, it’s important to be able to handle boredom, but only if you understand why-–for instance, if you understand that it’s a sign of respect to sit and listen to an older person tell stories that you’re not interested in. But if a kid doesn’t understand that, then being bored in front of Grandpa just makes the kid resentful of visiting Grandpa, which is the opposite of respect. For the same reason, we never make our kids greet extended family. Forced greetings and the like disrupt the growth of bonds that create intimacy with others. Similarly, forced thank-yous for gifts and forced apologies for mishaps like spilled food or broken tchotchkes disrupt the discovery of the subtleties of expressing gratitude and regret by contaminating the process with shame, fear, and embarrassment.
17. My role as parent is as guide and protector, not manager. To support my daughter’s discovery and eventual mastery of the world, it’s at least as important that I avoid making her feel nervous, afraid, and bad about herself as it is to teach her.
18. Improvement requires error correction, and error correction requires error detection. Many strategies for softening or eliminating rules merely obscure their coercive nature, allowing them to persist under the radar. Fortunately, there is a simple test to check if a rule-reducing strategy still contains coercion or not, and that is to switch the roles from you and your child to you and your partner or spouse.

What I got out of it

1. Definitely didn’t agree with everything Aaron shared, but it definitely made me think about certain frustrations and fights I’ve had with my girls and how they likely weren’t necessary. Fundamentally, thinking about your kids as adults and giving them freedom and autonomy to learn on their own resonates a lot for me.

The post The Sovereign Child by Aaron Stupple appeared first on The Rabbit Hole .

2024-12-06 01:22:29

1. Most business wrecks that I have encountered are due to over-reaching. To reckless speculation on a hidden chance. To that haste which laughs at conservatism. To racing ahead on un-blazed trails, in fear that some rival may go farther or get higher.
2. Because of my mother, a dime to me has always looked as big as a dollar. Not my dimes only, but the other fellow’s dimes. I have spent them carefully, both as owner and trustee. I have never gambled in a large way, whether acting for myself or for others. So the failures I have made—and they are many—have never counted strongly against me. I have escaped the distrust engendered by conspicuous disaster. When I lost, I lost little in money and nothing in confidence. When I won, I often gained millions for my client and a wealth of prestige for myself. That I largely owe to my mother.
3. When the doctor pronounced me too sickly for school I went to the cedar swamp. Their work started at 4:30 in the morning. We milked the cows and fed the cattle before breakfast. At 6:30 we drove to the swamp, carrying our lunch with us. All day long we cut poles and hewed ties. After dinner came another milking; then we bedded the cattle for the night.
At nine o’clock we crept up a ladder to the attic and our bed. Yet it never occurred to me that I was working hard. In after years I did the same in business. I had no working hours. When I ceased before midnight, that was a holiday for me. I often left my office at two o’clock in the morning. Sundays were my best working days, because there were no interruptions. For sixteen years after entering business I rarely had an evening or a Sunday not occupied by work.
4. One of the greatest advertising men this country has developed always went out to sell in person before he tried to sell in print. I have known him to spend weeks in going from farm to farm to learn the farmers’ viewpoint. I have known him to ring a thousand doorbells to gain the woman’s angle.
5. So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play.
6. That was my first experience with traced results. It taught me to stand for known and compared returns, and I have urged them ever since. In no other way can real service reveal its advantage. Doing anything blindly is folly.
7. A good article is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods, in print or in person, without samples.
8. A man who has made a success desires to see others make a success. A man who has worked wants to see others work.
9. We must never judge humanity by ourselves. The things we want, the things we like, may appeal to a small minority. The losses occasioned in advertising by venturing on personal preference would easily pay the national debt. We live in a democracy. On every law there are divided opinions. So in every preference, every want. Only the obstinate, the bone-headed, will venture far on personal opinion. We must submit all things in advertising, as in everything else, to the court of public opinion.
10. The saver and the worker get the preference of the men who control opportunities. And often that preference proves to be the most important thing in life.
11. So long as we are going upward, nothing is a hardship. But when we start down, even from a marble mansion to a cheaper palace, that is hard.
12. In the early stages of our careers none can judge us by results. The shallow men judge us by likings, but they are not men to tie to. The real men judge us by our love of work, the basis of their success. They employ us for work, and our capacity for work counts above all else.
13. Let us pause here for a moment. That was my beginning in advertising. It was my first success. It was based on pleasing people, like everything else I have done. It sold, not only to dealers, but to users. It multiplied the use of carpet sweepers.
14. Soon I was ready to mail the letters. They did not urge dealers to buy the sweepers. They offered the privilege of buying.
15. But I have often returned to Grand Rapids to envy my old associates. They continued in a quiet, sheltered field. They met no large demands. Success and money came to them in moderation. But in my turbulent life, as I review it, I have found no joys they missed. Fame came to me, but I did not enjoy it. Money came in a measure, but I could never spend it with pleasure. My real inclination has always been toward the quiet paths. This story is written in gardens near Grand Rapids, where the homing instinct brought me. When my old friends and I get together here, it is hard to decide who took the wiser course.
16. No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration.
17. When I met Mr. Swift I said: “I did not sell Cotosuet, did not talk Cotosuet. I sold pie cards and schemes, and Cotosuet went with them.” “Then I wish you would teach our other men to do that.” “It cannot be taught,” I replied. And I am still of that opinion. The difference lies in the basic conception of selling. The average salesman openly seeks favors, and seeks profit for himself. His plea is, “Buy my goods, not the other fellow’s.” He makes a selfish appeal to selfish people, and of course he meets resistance. I was selling service. The whole basis of my talk was to help the baker get more business. The advantage to myself was covered up in my efforts to please him.
18. I never tried to sell anything, even in my retail-store advertising. I always offered a favor. Now I talk of service, profit, pleasure, and gifts, not any desires of my own.
19. There I learned another valuable principle in advertising. In a wide-reaching campaign we are too apt to regard people in the mass.
20. We try to broadcast our seed in the hope that some part will take root. That is too wasteful to ever bring a profit. We must get down to individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person. Center on their desires. Consider the person who stands before you with certain expressed desires. However big your business, get down to the units, for those units are all that make size.
21. Again and again I have told simple facts, common to all makers in the line—too common to be told. But they have given the article first allied with them an exclusive and lasting prestige.
22. That situation occurs in many, many lines. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary. He does not realize that the world at large might marvel at those methods, and that facts which seem commonplace to him might give him vast distinction.
23. Serve better than others, offer more than others.
24. That’s another big point to consider. Argue anything for your own advantage, and people will resist to the limit. But seem unselfishly to consider your customers’ desires, and they will naturally flock to you. The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness.
25. But when we make specific and definite claims, when we state actual figures or facts, we indicate weighed and measured expressions.
26. We go with the crowd. So the most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts.
27. The best way found to sell a product to thousands is probably the best way to sell other thousands.
28. The lesson in this is the lesson in all salesmanship. One must know what buyers are thinking about and what they are coming to want. One must know the trends to be a leader in a winning trend.
29. The only way to sell is in some way to seem to offer super-service.
30. There is a great advantage in a name that tells a story. The name is usually displayed. Thus the right name may form a reasonably complete ad. which all who run may read. Coining the right name is often the major step in good advertising. No doubt such names often double the results of expenditures. Consider the value of such names as May-Breath, Dyanshine, 3-in-One Oil, Palmolive Soap, etc.
31. It is curious how we all desire to excel in something outside of our province.
32. That leads many men astray. Men make money in one business and lose it in many others. They seem to feel that one success makes them super business men.
33. I have never found that it paid to give either a sample or a full-size package to people who do not request it. We must arouse interest in our product before it has value to anybody.
34. Human nature in our country over is about alike.
35. Quick volume is more profitable than slowly-developed volume. When one proves that a plan is right and safe the great object is quick development. Attain the maximum as soon as you can.
36. The simple things, easily understood, and striking a popular chord, are the appeals which succeed with the masses.
37. You cannot go into a well-occupied field on the simple appeal, “buy my brand.” That is a selfish appeal, repugnant to all. One must offer exceptional service to induce people to change from favorite brands to yours. The usual advertiser does not offer that exceptional service. It cannot be expected. But giving exact figures on that service which others fail to supply may establish great advantage.
38. It aroused curiosity. And that is one of the greatest incentives we know in dealing with human nature.
39. New habits are created by general education. They are created largely by writers who occupy free space. I have never known of a line where individual advertisers could profitably change habits.
40. All my later advertising on Quaker Oats was aimed at oatmeal users. I never tried to win new users. I simply told existing users the advantages we offered. And we gained large results on those lines.
41. But my long experience had taught me that preventive measures were not popular. People will do anything to cure a trouble, but little to prevent it. Countless advertising ideas have been wrecked by not understanding that phase of human nature. Prevention offers slight appeal to humanity in general.
42. Folks give little thought to warding off disasters. Their main ambition is to attain more success, more happiness, more beauty, more cheer.
43. That is the hardest fact for an ad.-writer to learn or an advertiser to comprehend. The natural instinct is to make the ad. attractive. One must remember, however, ads. are not written to amuse, but to sell. And to sell at the lowest cost possible. Mail-order advertising, based on accurate figures on cost and result, shows the best ways known to do that.
44. Mr. A. D. Lasker, who is a very wise man, often attributed much of my success to living among simple people. He always wanted me to work in the woods where I write this history, and I have done so for two decades. Here most of the people I talk with are my gardeners, their families, and the village folk near by. I learn what they buy and their reasons for buying.
45. Every campaign that I devise or write is aimed at some individual member of this vast majority. I do not consult managers and boards of directors. Their viewpoint is nearly always distorted. I submit them to the simple folks around me who typify America. They are our customers. Their reactions are the only ones that count.
46. Any product worth advertising, if rightly presented, has more interest than a story. It means economy, or help, or pleasure—perhaps for years to come. Amusement is transient. Why sacrifice your great appeal to secure a moment’s fickle attention?
47. Advertising means salesmanship to millions.
48. Another principle taught by experience is that ads. should tell the full story. People do not read ads in series.
49. Indefinite claims leave indefinite impressions, and most of them are weak. But definite claims get full credit and value. The reader must either decide you are correct or decide that you are lying. And the latter supposition is unusual.
50. People are seeking happiness, safety, beauty, and content. Then show them the way.
51. Another thing to learn exactly is what sort of headline most appeals. Again and again, I have multiplied results from an ad. by eight or ten by a simple change in headline.
52. The best school I know is canvassing, going from home to home. Many great ad-writers spend half their time in that. They learn by personal contacts what wins and what repulses. Then they apply their findings to appeals in print.
53. I gradually came to specialize on proprietaries and foods, on products that people buy over and over. They offer great opportunities in advertising.
54. All your wholesale demand, all your retail demand, depends on your influence with the consumer. Never forget that.
55. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.
56. Don’t think of people in the mass. That gives you a blurred view. Think of a typical individual, man or woman, who is likely to want what you sell. Don’t try to be amusing. Money spending is a serious matter. Don’t boast, for all people resent it. Don’t try to show off. Do just what you think a good salesman should do with a half-sold person before him.
57. Remember that the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interest or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising.
58. The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. Often they do not quote a price. They do not say that dealers handle the product. The ads are based entirely on service.
59. Don’t think that those millions will read your ads to find out if your product interests. They will decide by a glance—by your headline or your pictures. Address the people you seek, and them only.
60. Human nature is perpetual. In most respects it is the same today as in the time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring. You will never need to unlearn what you learn about them. We learn, for instance, that curiosity is one of the strongest of human incentives.
61. Many have advertised, “Try it for a week. If you don’t like it we’ll return your money.” Then someone conceived the idea of sending goods without any money down, and saying, “Pay in a week if you like them.” That proved many times as impressive.
62. Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck.
63. Makers of safety razors have long advertised quick shaves. One maker advertised a 78-second shave. That was definite. It indicated actual tests. That man at once made a sensational advance in his sales.
64. If a claim is worth making, make it in the most impressive way.
65. Whatever claim you use to gain attention, the advertisement should tell a story reasonably complete.
66. The best advertisers do that. They learn their appealing claims by tests—by comparing results from various headlines. Gradually they accumulate a list of claims important enough to use. All those claims appear in every ad thereafter.
67. In every ad consider only new customers.
68. Genius is the art of taking pains.
69. We cannot go after thousands of men until we learn how to win one.
70. The product itself should be its own best salesman. Not the product alone, but the product plus a mental impression, and atmosphere, which you place around it. That being so, samples are of prime importance. However expensive, they usually form the cheapest selling method.
71. Putting a price on a sample greatly retards replies. Then it prohibits you from using the word “Free” in your ads. And that word “Free,” as we have stated, will generally more than pay for your samples.
72. Give them only to people who exhibit that interest by some effort. Give them only to people to whom you have told your story. First create an atmosphere of respect, a desire, an expectation. When people are in that mood, your sample will usually confirm the qualities you claim.
73. Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them—not by arguments around a table. Go to the court of last resort—the buyers of your product.
74. To attack a rival is never good advertising. Don’t point out others’ faults. It is not permitted in the best mediums. It is never good policy.
75. Tell people what to do, not what to avoid.

What I got out of it.

1. Hopkins makes a lot of points that are still relevant today and helpful to think about regardless of which type of product or service you’re marketing.

The post My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins appeared first on The Rabbit Hole .

2024-12-05 03:20:28

Key Takeaways

1. Caring is defined as a process that involves helping another person grow and self-actualize.
2. You must understand the needs, context, and individuality of the person you are caring for
3. You must shift your perspective and approach depending on the person you are caring for
4. Caring benefits both the carer and the cared-for. The carer experiences personal growth and fulfillment through the act of caring.
5. Caring creates a deeper connection and mutual understanding between individuals. It also helps by connecting you to something beyond yourself
6. Caring takes place at home, in work, while teaching, parenting, etc.

What I got out of it

1. Caring = helping someone else grow and self-actualize

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