“She was shocked because she was expecting us to play another concerto. So when I started the first bar of the D-minor concerto, she kind of jumped and panicked like an electric shock. And she couldn’t even consider moving ahead with playing.”
If you would like to see what real despair looks like, go on YouTube and search for “Maria Joao Pires wrong concerto.”
Pires is a concert pianist. She went on stage once, in front of a large live audience.
As soon as the orchestra started playing, Pires realized she had prepared the wrong piece. The orchestra was playing something other than what she had been rehearsing.
Result?
Panic. Sickness. Despair. I mean, imagine the situation.
You’re in front of a live audience.
The orchestra is mercilessly pushing on.
A few moments more, and it will be your turn to start playing as the star of the evening. Except you are completely unprepared and unable to perform.
And the time before everybody realizes it is three… two… one…
I’m not 100% sure why I decided to tell you this particular story. But in my mind, it tied into a question I got a few days ago from a reader named Randy:
How long did it take you to start writing daily emails like Ben Settle suggests and to always have something interesting to say?
(I’m asking you this since I’ve been trying my hand at writing daily emails. But even when I always come up with stories to tell, I find it difficult is to always have a lesson to add at the end)
My advice to Randy, and to you in case you want it, is to keep two lists.
One is where good ideas go.
Another is where fun/sickening stories go.
And rather than having a good story (“concert pianist realizes she prepared the wrong piece”), and then trying to pull out of your head a moral to that story…
… or rather than having a good idea to share (such as “keep two lists”) and then trying to pull out of your head a fun way to illustrate that idea…
… use your lists.
Because not everybody has a memory like Maria Joao Pires. In those 30 seconds from the icy and disgusting realization that she had prepared the entirely wrong piece… Pires managed to summon the right concerto from the depths of her mind. She played the whole thing flawlessly.
I am not that talented. And perhaps you aren’t either. No matter.
You can use paper — or a computer file — to outsource your memory. And your creativity too. Go down your lists, and come up with connections that you couldn’t make if’n you just relied on your raw brainpower.
“But two lists!” I hear you saying. “That’s twice the work of one list!”
True. And it goes back to something A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said:
“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”
This simple idea has been super valuable to me. It’s one of the main standards I keep for these emails I send you each day. And also for copy that I write for clients.
In fact, I would like to say this one idea is the most important thing to what I do… but there’s no “one thing.” So I put this Jim Rutz idea as no. 8 in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.
If by chance you haven’t seen this book yet… and you want to know what the other 9 commandments are… here’s where you can get the whole desperate and surprising lot: