A few years ago, I met up with a friend named Sam in Tel Aviv.
At the time, Sam was working for an Israeli tech startup as their high-confidence, this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be sales guy for the US. He came to Tel Aviv for work for a few days. I flew out from Croatia, where I was living back then, to meet up with him.
One day, Sam and I went to the beach.
The Tel Aviv beach is a miles-long strip of sand, filled with good-looking people sunning themselves or hiding under parasols, and the sparkling blue Mediterranean sea rolling up with mid-sized waves.
At the corner of the beach, we saw could rent little two-person sailboats.
I’d never been in a sailboat before. Sam had been once or twice. Even so, we had the idea to go try it.
“Have you ever sailed before?” the sailboat rental guy asked.
“Oh, I live in Los Angeles,” Sam said with 100% conviction.
I frowned when I heard this.
The rental guy frowned as well. “So you have sailed before or not?”
“It’s no problem, Sam said. “I’m from Los Angeles” He put a lot of emphasis on the word “from”.
Sam and the rental guy stared at each other for a few moments. Then the rental guy shrugged his shoulders. And he rented us the sailboat.
There’s a lesson in that story.
Perhaps it’s obvious. And if not, I will tie it up for you tomorrow, and tell you how it connects to an unexpected area of persuasion and influence.
For today, I just want to finish up the cautionary tale above.
Sam and I went out on the sailboat. We sailed around for an hour.
It was a fairly unpleasant experience, slow and hot and slightly nauseating, since I knew nothing about what we were doing, and Sam knew very little.
Eventually, it was time to bring the boat back in.
We headed straight for the sandy beach without a specific plan of what exactly we would do.
But then, the wind caught the sails.
The waves grabbed the hull.
The beast picked up speed.
People on the beach first grew curious, then alarmed, then started running.
Mothers were screaming and pulling their children out of the water.
Old people stood at a distance, pointing and shaking their heads.
Boys cheered and waited for the inevitable crash.
And sure enough, as Sam and I sped up to the beach, out of the sea, and into the separating crowd, the keel of the boat, which we didn’t think to pull in, caught in the sand.
The entire boat toppled over with a crash.
The mast dug in among beach towels and picnic baskets. Sam and I wound up face first in shallow water, eating sand.
The boat rental guy came running over, holding his head in his hands, yelling. I’m not 100% sure, but I think he might have been yelling something like, “But you said you’re from Los Angeles!”
Or maybe not. Maybe he was just yelling how we should have pulled in the keel and lowered the sail, and how we could have killed somebody or at least ourselves.
So that’s my story. The message, again, if not clear, I will make clear tomorrow. In case you want to read that, sign up for my email newsletter. It’s okay. I’m from Los Angeles.