One of the biggest problems I have in marketing my book “Principles of Applied Stupidity” is in coming up with a “elevator pitch” to succinctly and pithily sum it up. I have tried to say “it’s using the opposite of the conventional wisdom” but I dunno, just doesn’t seem to grab the overall idea.
There are more than 30 principles at the moment, ranging across subject areas like leadership, marketing, branding, creativity, and communications . . . these are all “buzzword” topics and sound terribly trite, but the point of the book is that it looks at all these somewhat tired topics from a totally different angle.
Anyway the newest thing I am trying to impart, perhaps more in the live presentations, has to do with the potential of what lies outside the realm of the tried and true.
There is an awful lot to be said for following the standard procedures in life. And for some people, maybe for most people, that kind of predictable orderliness is the right way to go.
But one thing life has taught me is, if you focus on a standard path or procedure, this tends to blind you to the many infinite opportunities that lie outside the well beaten path. The space-time continuum is filled with little eddies, whirlpools and, best word I think, anomalies. My entire professional life has been based on these anomalies, to the point where I actually expect them to happen.
Just one example, when I first published “Real Men Don’t Rehearse,” I really had no real marketing skills. I published it anyway (that is to say, I printed up 300 copies). How was I to know that a “dance friend” of mine had a sister who had a friend that she thought I should meet, and when I met that person and gave them a copy of my newly printed book, that they would share it with a childhood friend who was also the host of a nationally syndicated talk radio show? 35 days after “self publishing” my first book, I found myself on live coast-to-coast CBS radio for two hours in primetime.
There are no seminars or workshops that will cover this kind of thing. The only way you can discover them is if you jump in the water and go where the tide takes you.
For some people, the path must be carefully mapped and known before they will take the first step. Seems like a wise approach. But there are no monuments to the second person to arrive anywhere.
© Justin Locke
