« King Of The Squirrels Case Study - A Rookie Goes Dumb | Home | How To Consciously Get Unconscious Mastery — Mental Best Practices For Success »
When Inner School Marms Strike: Man Becomes King Of The Squirrels!
Nothing says ‘I’ll take booby prizes for $200, Alex’ like getting valuable, applicable free training — then 
ignore it because you’ve focused on a speech quirk that annoys you.
Geez, the number of things I would never watch nor listen to if that were the case. But hey, I’m not in the business of tossing out the baby with the bathwater.
Unlike this guy who has given his answer to the timeless question — “Is it better to have a million dollars or be King Of The Squirrels?
Come, let’s see why he settled for the booby prize and how you can avoid the same fate . . .
During the Productivity Show podcast, while interviewer Tony Goodson was doing a fine job of extracting the pith of McFarlin’s expertise for gaining more control of schedule and productivity via visual mapping strategies, one guy wasn’t listening to that.
Nosiree, Bob. This King Of The Squirrels was busy counting the number of times visual strategy expert Kyle McFarlin said, “You know . . .”
To which I say . . .
“You know,” no disrespect but to complain about anyone’s conversational peccadilloes . . . let’s face it — if you’re counting the number of things you can’t stand when an expert is giving you valuable, FREE insight — then you’re paying attention to the wrong, damn things.
I get that, the tendency to do that. I really do. I do it myself … sometimes. Rarely. However, I never let it get in the way of grokking the good information.
And when guys like “MarcC” settle for the bobby prize, I call it the King Of The Squirrels Syndrome. And to that complainer . . . dude . . . you should really watch whom you call “brainless.” I’m pretty sure you stepped over the pot/kettle/black line with that witty bon mot.
Here’s my point: while grammar perfectionists are fond of citing the “rules,” when their copy is tested against mine (or another grammar heathen’s), the conversational tone version is always the winner.
So you tell me, is perfect grammar more important than the effective communication? The results say not.
As a copywriter, I occasionally encounter this problem from others reading my sales copy. See, inside their heads, grammar perfectionists are listening to their high school English teacher’s voice when they chide me (and others) about proven, effective sales copy that just happens to violate a handful of high school English rules.
But when it increases sales or boosts revenues, you have to ask yourself — who cares?
Now McFarlin posted about how he agrees with the guy criticizing him; and while I see their points, I think it’s hazardous to make sweeping changes based on just one person’s opinion. I also think it’s nuttier than squirrel poop to encourage critics in this way.
But McFarlin suffers from the disease of pathological niceness and me . . . not so much.
But, you know . . . (oooo, a double!) I often start sentences with “you know” simply because it’s conversational. Do I understand that, in print, that’s the equivalent of verbally saying “you know”? Absolutely I do.
And I don’t care.
Because the purpose of writing in my profession is to produce a result. And what clients are paying me to do is produce results, not make someone’s inner schoolteacher happy. And if the conversation doesn’t flow, the reader stops reading, I don’t produce the result and the client loses that sale.
But hey, at least the grammar was perfect, right? That’s settling for being King Of The Squirrels instead of grabbing the million dollars.
But back to the grammar teachers — while this will honk-off a lot of people, especially those still slaved to their inner schoolmarm, it is nonetheless true: English teachers, the wielders of perfect grammar, make far less money than professional copywriters.
If you take solace in the fact that your grammar is perfect and that’s most important thing to you, then more power to you. You are now officially a King Of The Squirrels.
Sing it with me: “Everyone genuflect, show some respect, King Of The Squirrels!” *
Me, I’d rather have the million dollars.
* = With apologies to the lyricist of Disney’s Aladdin, I did rewrite the verse from his song “Prince Ali.”
Note: This post was inspired by a badly written comment I posted on Goodson’s podcast page. Goodson, bless his heart, posted it anyway.
Technorati tags: Walter Terry, ROIcopywriting, information marketing, information publishing, info-products
By Walter |
Topics: Client Top Secret, Inside The Mind, Pet Peeves |
January 31st, 2008 at 9:15 am
Walter,
YOU KNOW, I thoroughly enjoyed the post. And it was a difficult decision for me: It’s like on the one hand, the guy was as acidic as possible in his criticism. On the other hand, he was dead right. My hope is that by ignoring the capsule taste, I can get the medicine if it’s worthwhile (In this case, I’ll be a better speaker over the years if I vary my ‘You Knows’ with ‘You’ll be interested to Discover’ and ‘You may not Know’).
Also, by not attacking Marc C, I’m more likely that he’ll give me another valuable nugget in the future, even if it doesn’t come in a pretty package… Which I feel is more likely to put me in the million camp as opposed to NutGod (I mean King of the Squirrels!). So in a way, by taking Marc C’s advice to heart and ignoring the packaging, I feel I’m in the spirit of what you point out Marc C should have done which is listen to good advice even if the delivery has flaws.
So in addition to my pathological kindness (I’m not even going to try and argue that, ‘you know’ me too well), my hope is I’m developing some rawhide in addition.