Are you a sociopath, or are you playing the game?

Day 2 of shipping for shipping’s sake.

Yesterday I touched on a few principles I grabbed from a sales book I read a while back, but what I found most interesting, is how little I actually end up writing in a 60-minute period.

I haven’t re-read the article since, but as it was only yesterday, I recall there was scarcely any meat whatsoever.

I’m no marketing guru, and so I’ve no choice other than echoing the thesis that many great writers have spelled out before me - writing phenomenal content is the best form of marketing there is. You add enough value, people will share it with their friends to add value to their network. Simples, right?

Well… You have to write phenomenal content first.

I suppose writing well comes with time, and I could tell you that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it certainly wasn’t built by not doing the work.

And so in light of following through with promises I’ve made to myself, and making it publicly available to prove to myself the work is actually done, here I am writing nonsense on a Sunday night.

So we covered follow through, right?

But what about following up and following back?

We can draw direct benefits for the original topic in question, but what about your day-to-day?

I noticed after finishing writing yesterday, that the subtitle had exactly 0 relevance to the rest of the ensuing word vomit.

So now after 90 minutes and 1000 words, I might actually get around to what I was trying to say in the first place.

Friends, the family you chose. Love them. Love to hate them. Hate that you love them.

This will sound naive, and it’s not the first or last time anyone will say it, but it’s really easy to lose touch with friends after high school.

I’ve gone without speaking to prior best mates for 12 months at a time, and by chance been lucky enough to rekindle old flames a few years down the track.

Now obviously some friends are best when seen sporadically, while others serve as your emotional rock, but I’m sure you’ve all had at least one relationship slip away because you never got around to giving them quick call.

Is that a bad thing? Sure, maybe not, we all need to get out from under the blankets and meet some new people, and I’m certain some of you will be thinking of Dunbar’s number and the fact that you just don’t have the capacity for those connections anymore.

However…

I’ve found that following up, and even following back with old friends and colleagues has circulated a lot of interesting conversations and even new connections over the past few years.

Turns out it pays dividends to be a decent person. I’m certainly not perfect, but keeping a friendship alive since high school gave me the opportunity to work in the industry I’m in today, and make a fool out of myself guiding kayak tours on weekends — I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything different. *Funny how things work out.

Just to give myself a challenge of maintaining some old friendships, I think I even sent out some voice memos to a random group of people a couple of Christmas’s ago. A genuine compliment here. A nice memory there. A classic, “hope you’ve been well”.

To clarify, I’m not sending unsolicited voice recordings to people I’ve never been friends with, and they have free range to think I’m a weird dude and leave it be. - I’m sure there were a couple, numbers game innit.

So, the question remains; Does implementing sales tactics on your personal life make you a sociopath, or does it simply lubricate the process of making and maintaining relationships. Is mixing business and personal life like mixing oil and water?

I don’t f*cking know.

But.

I think about it a lot.

If you can articulate a response that shines a light on any of this after reading, then plz send digi mail ser: [email protected]

Feel free to share if it scratched an itch.

50 Minutes 31/07/22

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