A few days ago, I was on a Zoom call with a business owner who reads these emails. He said how he likes reading my newsletter because I lead such an interesting life — “all these podcasts, all these amazing books, all these movies, dates, and traveling and all that. Like, wow.”
That surprised me. I can tell you the inside view of my life. It does not appear very interesting.
In fact, maybe you’ve noticed I almost never write emails that share genuine personal stories any more. (The exception is small status-building snippets, like the one at the start of this email.)
There are two reasons why I almost never write personal story emails any more:
1. I just don’t think I lead a very interesting life, and I don’t want to subject you to trivial anecdotes, pumped up to seem like they are something fun. (Seinfeld did it way better than I ever will.)
2. I have been writing this newsletter for 8 years, and I feel I’ve told every interesting story I ever had. In other words, I’m bored by my own stories, and so I’m projecting that you will be bored by them too.
This, of course, is one of the classic blunders, which can cost you millions of dollars if you do your own marketing.
The fact is, most business owners get bored of their own marketing way sooner than their market gets bored.
It helps that the market isn’t ever fully paying attention, and that it’s also a “moving parade”:
New people are constantly coming in. Old people are walking out. The upshot is that the stories (and marketing) that you’ve used a thousand times before are still fresh and interesting to a thousand people in your market.
So let me take my own advice, and share with you some personal stories I’ve already shared in this newsletter. Here’s a menu. Maybe you will find one or two items intriguing enough to click through and read:
1. The time a car fell in front of me out of the sky
2. The time I had an honest-to-goodness religious epiphany on a bridge
3. The origin story of how I became a writer, going back to kindergarten
4. The time I almost approached the woman who was most probably “The ONE” but fortunately didn’t
6. The time the “license plate game” made me think that manifestation is real, and that I can do it
8. The time a reader unsubscribed and wrote that I’m “simply too dumb to be helped”
So there you go. 10 personal stories, all true, and maybe even interesting enough to be worth retelling.
But maybe you’ve been a reader of my newsletter for a while? And maybe you remember me telling some other personal story? If so, write in and let me know. I’ve almost certainly forgotten the story you remember (I struggled to come up with the list of 10 above). I’ll appreciate you reminding me.