Chris commented on the “there’s nothing in this email” email from last week.
“When in doubt give me a good quote and I’m happy.”
Thanks, Chris.
I wasn’t exactly “in doubt” today, but I really appreciate it when people engage with my work, and I want to send Chris some love.
So here’s one of my favorite quotes ever. I’ve posted it on Instagram a handful of times over the last 4 or 5 years.
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
— Walt Disney
If you want to sell stuff, it would behoove you to be like Walt.
Entertainment is more effective than education. Not just to get new customers — but to retain them.
The single most difficult, most painful, most expensive thing to do is to get a new customer.
So it only makes sense that we should do everything in our power to keep them around for as long as possible once we got ‘em.
They won’t stick around for more than a year if you rely only on information and education. I don’t care who you are, you don’t have enough stuff to teach.
Information is important. Entertainment is more powerful.
PS - Chris has a Substack. It’s called One Hundred Days of Writing. It looks like a cool project.
PPS - If you engage with my stuff AND you have a cool project, maybe I’ll share that too.
Ryan - Thanks for sending the love and linking to my project. And I agree with the rest of this post. Entertainment and charisma will keep me interested and engaged longer with a creator, marketer, or writer than just information alone. For example, there are thousands of finance influencers saying roughly the same thing--but I follow the one or two who deliver the info using a sense of humor or a style or the "character" that I relate to best.
Thanks again,
Chris