“So why do you think I should work for the National Security Agency?”
Today is the last day to sign up for my Age of Insight live training. And since this is the last email I will send before the deadline, let me tell you why you shouldn’t sign up.
I call it Good Will Hunting disease.
As you might know, Good Will Hunting is movie about a tough-talking, blue-collar math genius from the slums of Boston, played by a young Matt Damon.
In one scene, Will is interviewing for a job at the NSA.
“You’d be working on the cutting edge,” says the NSA guy in a cocky sales pitch. “You’d be exposed to the kind of technology not seen anywhere else because it’s classified. Superstring theory. Chaos math. Advanced algorithms. So the question is, why shouldn’t you work for the NSA?”
Will nods his head and thinks. “Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA… That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.”
And then he goes on a 2-minute rant, all about how he’d just be breaking codes the NSA, feeling good about doing his job well, but the real upshot of his work would be burned villages, dead American soldiers, lost factory jobs, drug epidemics, inflation, and poisoned baby seals.
Will finishes up his rant and smirks sarcastically. “So why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? I’m holding out for something better.”
Of course:
Your offer is nothing like a job at the NSA. And your pitch is nothing like the NSA recruiter’s pitch.
Still I bet you that your audience, on some level, suffers from Good Will Hunting disease.
Too smart. Too sophisticated. Too skeptical.
And if you need proof of it, just look inside yourself. Don’t you smirk and scoff and shrug off pitch for top-secret opportunities all the time, even if they are at the cutting edge, and even if they promise things you superstring theory and chaos math, or whatever the equivalent is in the marketing space?
And this is why I am not making a pitch for you to join the Age of Insight training. The only offer I will make you, unless you are holding out for something better, is to join my email list. Click here smart guy.