I got a story for you today that you can use to sell something new and untested:
On August 26 1900, during the 2nd Olympic Games, a team of Dutch rowers needed a coxswain.
If like me you don’t know what a coxswain is:
He steers the rowboat. It’s preferable to have somebody small and light in the role, so as not to create unnecessary drag and slow down the boat.
This being only the second Olympics, the Dutch team weren’t all that prepared. They had a coxswain but he was too heavy. So they pulled a boy from the audience. He was French (the 2nd Olympics being in Paris) and about eight years old. The Dutchmen stuck the boy at the end of the boat and told him how to steer.
And they’re off!
The 7 teams started rowing. The Dutchmen were working furiously. The unknown French boy was doing his best to keep the boat going straight towards the finish line.
7 minutes and 34.2 seconds later, the Dutch team, plus their unknown French boy-coxswain, pulled through the finish line… in first place.
A crowd assembled and started cheering the victors. Meanwhile, the unknown French boy slipped away into the throng, rejoined his family, and was never seen or heard from again.
In spite of decades of research, nobody has been able to track him down or identify him.
He remains “the biggest Olympics mystery of all” — the youngest Olympic gold medalist ever, though he never got his gold medal, and nobody even knows his name. Even today, he is only known as “unknown French boy.”
I found this whole story fascinating and curious.
I asked myself what done it.
I realized that, of course, participation in the Olympics, and Olympic gold in particular, is now an enormous honor, and sports are big business.
It’s unimaginable today to be successful at the Olympics without the highest levels of preparation and optimization, and even then, chances of success are slim.
Once upon a time, it was easy, or at least much easier. It was possible long ago for a bystander, completely unprepared or unskilled, to participate in the Olympics, and even to win a gold medal. And then, to value it so little as to slip away, rejoin the nameless crowd, without even a look over his shoulder.
But in spite of dramatic difference between then and now, a real gold thread connects the two. That’s where the fascination and curiosity come from.
That’s why I say this is a story you can use to sell something new and untested.
Once upon a time, the Olympics themselves were new and untested. In 1900, it was unclear if the Olympics would survive for a third iteration, and hard to imagine they would become what they are today.
Maybe you have an offer that’s new and untested like that.
If so, you can tell the story of the unknown French boy to open up your prospects’ minds to participating in your offer now, while it’s still early days and the opportunity is easy, rather than waiting for it to become established and highly competitive and almost impossible to win.
I myself have an offer that’s new and untested, to write and publish a book for you, for free. I only announced it two days ago. I’m talking to people who have replied so far. But I am looking for just the right partner.
Maybe that could be you? Maybe we could form a one-off team and win the marketing and money equivalent of an Olympic gold medal? For the full details of this opportunity:
https://bejakovic.com/the-catch-behind-my-me-write-book-for-you-for-free-offer