Today, YouTube served me with up a recent interview that PBS did with Garry Kasparov.
Kasparov was World Chess Champion for 20 years and then an opposition leader in Russia.
“Unfortunately,” the interviewer said in his opening move to Kasparov, “you turned out to be right. Back in 2015, you wrote a book called ‘Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.'”
The interviewer took a breath after reading out that title. He went on:
“Now that we see what he’s doing, what should our response be?”
Given Kasparov’s book, this might seem like a reasonable question to ask.
And that’s just the point I want to make to you today. There’s something important hiding inside that question.
In the words of Mark Ford and John Forde from Great Leads… the fact that you understand what’s wrong can help make you seem like a more credible source for solutions, too.
The fact is, just because Kasparov wrote a book critical of Putin gives him no special insight on how to stop the raging war in Ukraine. The two are about as related as knowing that “heavy turbulence makes for unpleasant flights” and knowing how to land a jumbo jet.
And yet, it doesn’t matter. The human instinct to jump from one to the other. Because when we’ve got trouble, it’s natural to look outside ourselves for the solution. And at those times, we are willing to accept a lot of things as qualifications and authority.
The takeaway for you is clear:
Don’t build a better mousetrap.
Instead, write a book. Educate your prospect about the dangerous breeding habits and expansionary intent of the eastern harvest mouse. “The eastern harvest mouse is coming,” your book should say. “And it must be stopped.”
Ok, let’s get to the business end of this post:
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