Today I got a payment for an order of books from NY. New York is a great state if you've ever travelled through it. Manhattan is fun, but Western NY. the Catskills and such look like towns in Iowa and Illinois. Friendly folks. Neat architecture. Lovely is a good description.
I mailed a printed catalog to this former buyer. So far my return on investment (ROI) has been quite good and the pickup rate of 15% is higher than my emails which is about 2.5%. Yet, the knuckleheads and chuckleheads keep insisting that all the money will be made electronically. I suppose when some of these people fade away that might be true, but, isn't that obvious?
But think about this... what future? Occasionally I check in with Facebook, primarily to see what my kids or granddaughter are up to. And of course you can't help but notice your "friends" and the friends of friends. The amount of time wasted must be phenomenal. One friend (my real estate agent) related doing laundry and how her back hurt and she was looking forward to a visit to the chiropractor! Is this what I have been missing?
Another just keeps adding friends without rhyme or reason, possibly knowing 1% of the ones he's added. There won't be an eventual big announcement, that has already passed (none). It's time killing in action. Boredom, frustration and when you talk to people like this, often you find their life is seriously empty--but they play the game of looking busy.
The other day someone (in Australia) said my workaholism had preceded me. Well, I did laugh... but when you start over, a business or anything else, a lot of details need to be attended. In spite of my busy-ness he picked up ALL the back issues of The Chess Reports. That would be 100 of them! How he found out about me I have no idea. But the seed work has been going on since late 2005. That's how it is in most businesses. It takes some time to grow and it's a good idea to grow in the right direction.
For a while I wondered if I could do anything right. But persistence often wins out--added to a good offer! If you want me to make you a good offer, contact me. You will end up getting over 1500 letter-sized pages of stuff (in printable PDFs) which is bound to find a home with you somehow--the variety is overwhelming and I am just getting started.
When thinking about it the notion of non-repeats, variety, and timelessness surprised me. TCR is a publication which isn't really bound by being dated. Hope you give it a try. Issue #101 comes out tomorrow (every other Friday, before noon, Central Time).
bob@thinkerspressinc.com
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