Principle: The universal is in the particular
Two pieces of fatherly advice:
Always connect with your child when she’s unable to regulate her emotions. Make her feel loved first, then talk through that emotion with her.
Bleh. Rote. General. Wanna throw up. NEEEEEXT!
When your kid’s screaming, get quieter - a quarter the volume. Kneel down, hold her hand, and wait 10 seconds. You just cut the tantrum in half.
^ One of these sounds like it came from some granola without any experience. The other is advice you’d probably take if you had a kid under 5.
Want your advertising to get people to act, or no?
Tactics
Go through your marketing materials.
Emails. FB ad scripts. Landing pages. Home page. Podcast episodes. Tweets. Everything.
Replace…
Cereal → Frosted Mini Wheats
Tree → 18’ Cottonwood
“…loudly” → it made ears bleed
Unhealthy meal → The dino nuggets of sandwiches
Premium comfort → no princess ever found the pea under our mattress
Limited time → we pack up Tuesday at 9pm
Say any of the words on the left, and the subject is left waving their hand through a dark mist to latch onto what you’re talking about.
Describe it instead like something on the right, and despite never having seen an 18’ Cottonwood, your reader/viewer/listener will know exactly what you mean. And they’ll remember it for days and weeks to come.
Habits/Experiments
Start speaking like this.
When someone asks you what you did this weekend, instead of reporting on general activities, try to conjure specific images in their mind.
Ask them a week later what you did last week, and they’ll remember.
Mike
Today’s inspiration: Make to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath