Three mildly connected things for you today, to pick and choose from as you like:
#1. Budapest
I’m just finishing my visit to my former home town, Budapest, where I spent 11 years of my life. I reconnected with friends I’ve known for decades. The weather was perfect. The city was more beautiful than ever. All in all it was a great trip.
One thing that stood out during this trip:
Hungary, of which Budapest is the capital and by far the biggest town, had a big change of government earlier this year. The political party that had ruled for 16 years, and that had become infamous for corruption and undemocratic consolidation of power, finally lost the elections.
Ever since, foreign investment that had been frozen and kept out of the country has started flowing back in… Hungarians who had moved abroad, because they found the local situation hopeless, have been moving back… and the locals here just look optimistic and happy (ok, as happy as Hungarians can ever look).
This brings me to…
#2. Claude Hopkins
Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising, which is a sort of Bible in the field of direct advertising, once wrote:
===
“People are like sheep. They cannot judge values, nor can you and I. We judge things largely by others’ impressions, by popular favor. 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. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”
===
Hopkins was talking about advertising, about picking and choosing products to sell and copy to run based on the trend of the crowd. Sure. But the idea applies more broadly.
The most effective thing in business, and maybe in life, is the trend of the crowd.
Yes, it’s possible to get rich and be happy during depressions and wars.
But a much more effective way to get rich and be happy is to work in industries and live in places that are going through periods of growth or rebirth of expansion. I thought of this during this trip to Budapest.
I hadn’t seriously considered moving back here ever since I had moved away almost 8 years ago. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, because of the trend of the crowd. I feel like this will be a place of excitement and growth over the coming years.
#3. Cold outreach
Yesterday I sent out an email to my list, asking folks if they’ve tried getting clients via cold outreach.
I got two classes of responses. Class 1:
1A. “Yes, I hate it. I hired an agency multiple times and every time I hated it.”
1B. “So far, 17 days in, 70 prospects approached, 0 clients, countless menty b’s.”
1C. “No, and wouldn’t ;)”
Then there’s class 2:
2A. “That is my primary method for getting clients.”
2B. “Yes, John. Works very well for me. No fancy cold email stack. Just a 3-liner email with a very relevant problem that they’d wanna get rid of. Brings me every month $12K to $18K!”
2C. “I’m using cold outreach to get clients, and I’m doing very well with it. Personally, one of the best methods, especially if we are talking about cold email outreach.”
Quite the difference between Class 1 and Class 2.
I started a discussion about this in my Daily Email House community.
If cold outreach is not something you hate or are fundamentally opposed to, you can join in the discussion below.
It’s an opportunity to share your experiences, and maybe learn from the experiences of some people who have been very successful with cold outreach. Here’s the link: