Legend says that during WWII, Nazi soldiers broke into the Old New Synagogue in Prague. The soldiers made it all the way up to the attic, where they were torn apart, limb by limb.
Silly Nazis. You don’t go into the attic of the Old New Synagogue. That’s where the remains of the Golem lie.
An even older legend explains:
Back in some ancient time, the leading rabbi of Prague created a living Golem. (Golem apparently means something like embryo or shapeless mass in Hebrew.)
The rabbi took a bunch of clay. He sculpted it so it looked like a big lump with a head and arms and legs. And he gave it life, by inserting a shem – a slip of paper with the name of God written on it — into the Golem’s mouth. The Golem sprang up and started lumbering around, doing the rabbi’s work.
Would you like to have that power? To take something big, vague, and as useless as a lump of clay… and turn it into a powerful and living thing which does your work for you?
You can do it, if you play what I call the “Golem Game.” I was reminded of it by Glenn Osborn a few weeks ago.
I’d written an email for this very newsletter with an offer of a free resource with a bunch of great old ads. To which Glenn wrote in to say:
Your response was HORRIBLE
On your “Old ad offer”
Because you did not NAME the collection of ads.
Fact is, my response wasn’t really horrible. A bunch of people wrote in to find out what the free resource was. But Glenn’s point stands. I would have done better, and probably much better, with a good name to call that bunch of ads.
And so I suggest to you the Golem Game. It goes like this:
You invent a name. To give your market a handle on a vague problem… symptom… enemy… mechanism… or opportunity they can’t fully grasp right now.
Then you take your name, you write it on a slip of paper, and you stick it in the mouth of that vague and useless lump. And you watch whether the name makes the useless lump come to life. If it does, your named and live Golem will do your work for you… carrying your prospects to the sales page and grunting “YOU BUY NOW!”
But if you didn’t write the right name on that slip of paper, well, then you try again.
After all, the Golem Game is a game, and the outcome of any individual round is uncertain.
If you don’t like those odds, then sit tight. I’ll write more about winning names in the future.
Meanwhile, I can point you to another free resource. It’s called Great Product Names for Dummies. I wrote it a few months ago. I’m a little ashamed of it because it gives away too much how-to advice. But who knows, maybe that’s exactly why you’ll like it. So if you feel like bringing things to life, here’s the link: