Get ready for a bit of inspirational massage:
I’m reading the autobiography of a guy named Bill Veeck, who was the last person to ever own an major league baseball team — in his case, Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians — without having an independent fortune.
At the time when Veeck got to Cleveland, the Cleveland Stadium had the biggest playing field in the majors.
(For all my non-baseball-loving readers: a baseball field consists of two parts, an infield and an outfield. The dimensions of the infield are strictly prescribed by the rulebook. The dimensions and shape of the outfield are not.)
Veeck found that his Cleveland players were discouraged by the size of their home stadium. They would hit a baseball 450 feet — a good ways by any standard — only to have it caught because the field was so large.
So Veeck installed a new fence which shrank the field.
Hitters started hitting better, because they thought they now had a chance to hit a home run.
So far, so normal.
But here’s the curious bit, which is both true and fit for one of those corporate office inspirational posters. From Veeck’s book:
===
There is an interesting psychological effect in bringing the fences within reach. After we put up the wire fence there were almost six times as many balls hit over the wire fence and into the old stands.
===
In case this isn’t 100% clear due to all the sports analogizing, the point is that:
1. Veeck’s players had convinced themselves they cannot hit a certain distance, say, 500 feet
2. Veeck changed the field so they only had to hit a shorter distance, say, 420 feet, to hit a home run
3. Within that smaller new field, six times as many players ended up hitting home runs of, say, 500 feet or more, which they thought they couldn’t do when the field was bigger
I’m not 100% sure what hte psychological term or explanation for this is.
Removing stress and pressure? Or finding a way around the players’ learned helplessness?
Whatever it is, I thought it’s a curious thing, possibly inspiring, and so I wanted to share it with you. Maybe it’s something you can find a way to apply in your own life and business, if there’s a fence, metaphorical or real, that has been unreachable for you, in spite of your best trying.
In other news:
In less than an hour from now, mentalist-turned-marketer Kennedy will go live on Zoom to share email copywriting and marketing secrets that took him from selling $27k of his flagship info product… to selling $544k of the same, to the same audience.
This is a live training that Kennedy is doing exclusively for readers of this newsletter.
If you have an email list, there might be valuable techniques you can pick up on this training which you can implement in your own list tomorrow.
Or who knows, maybe simply hearing Kennedy’s story in detail, and seeing that it is possible to go from selling $27k of an info product (quite common and manageable) to selling $544k of the same info product to the same audience (rare and frankly puzzling) is a doable thing.
Maybe not just for Kennedy, but maybe for others too. Maybe even you? I wouldn’t want to put that kind of pressure on you.
But if you want to hear Kennedy’s training, and get inspired, then a bit of time still remains for you to sign up: