In 75 BC, a group of pirates in the Aegean sea captured a 25-year-old Roman noble named Julius Caesar.
Caesar was neither scared nor impressed. When the pirates demanded 20 talents of silver for his release, Caesar put his hands on his hips and spat on the ground.
“Morons!” he said. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? Ask for at least 50 talents!”
The pirates should have taken heed at this point. Instead, they got greedy. They took up the 50 talent offer.
Caesar’s men left for a few weeks to collect the silver.
Meanwhile, Caesar settled in among the pirates. Not really as their captive. More as their demanding, moody leader.
He gambled with the pirates. He shushed them when he wanted to take a nap. He read his poetry to them and mocked them as illiterates when they weren’t adequately impressed.
Oh, and every so often, he also threatened to crucify them.
“Tee-hee,” sniggered his new pirate friends. “Sure, JC. You will ‘crucify’ us!”
After 38 days, the ransom arrived. 50 talents of silver, as promised.
The pirates released Caesar. Bad move.
The newly free Caesar went to the next island over, a place where he had no authority or influence. And he raised a small army.
He sailed after the pirates. He captured them. And as he said he would, he had them crucified. For leniency, he first had their throats cut.
When I was a kid — I guess like most boys — I imagined I would grow up into a kind of Caesar.
Fearless, moody, throwing down impossible threats that aroused mockery at first but that I then turned into frightening reality, against all odds.
Well, it didn’t turn out that way.
I’ve found I’m very unable to mold the world to my conscious will. Hell, like I wrote yesterday, I’ve never even niched down with any success.
I was a “cold email copywriter” for a bit during my first year freelancing… then an “alternative health email copywriter” for a while… and a “crypto conversion copywriter” for another… and all I really got to show for it was a bunch of wasted time and missed opportunities.
I’m not telling you not to specialize. I’m not telling you to set goals or to strive towards them.
All I really want to say is if you read stories like the one above, and then set your mind to glory… only to watch with horror as your own results fail to match up with that of Caesar… well, there is still hope.
Caesar once wrote it’s “easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
That’s a little too gruesome to use as a motivational message at the end of a daily email.
But it does speak a fundamental human truth, one you can profit from. Because our brains love to think in instances of flashy glory.
But that’s not how the world works. All I’m saying is this:
We’re all too obsessed with modeling what successful people do today that they are successful. Those are the instances of flashy glory.
There might be more value in modelling how these people got successful in the first place. But let me stop here — before I ruin a perfectly good and gory email with some mushy inspirational stuff. I believe you can draw your own conclusions if you like. And if you want more gory, maybe inspirational stuff, sign up here.