Humans have a tendency to make life and business more difficult than it has to be. Mayhap it’s because we feel like we have to “earn” success, mayhap it’s because we have an addiction to struggling that we don’t want to admit, or mayhap it’s just a survival instinct that comes from the cells of our ancestors still floating around inside us.
Why it happens doesn’t matter as much as realizing that it happens.
And happens does it.
This, in a large way, is what inspired Robert Updegraff to write his Obvious Adams tale (a book I come back to a few times a year) in the forgotten year of 1916. If people didn’t add complexity to the simple and obvious, this story wouldn’t need to exist.
Alas, we’re in the reality where this book does exist. And it exists for a reason:
Obvious solutions ain’t so obvious.
(Spoiler alert: This fact has bred entire industries… life coaching… business consulting… therapy… and we ain’t even cracking the surface here, cully.)
Anyway, here’s why I bring it up:
I read an interview earlier today with the front man of my favorite band, Goose. The band has absolutely blown up since this interview happened in 2017. Even in 2019, they were still a small opening act… and they recently (at the time of my writing) sold out Madison Square Garden, just six years later.
Explosive growth in an industry where growth is one of the hardest things to accomplish for no other reason than people being pigeonholed into the tiniest and narrowest of niches of subgenres (if they aren’t being flat-out replaced by AI “music”—because music, like any art, requires a modicum of emotional intelligence to be music—as many streaming platforms have begun to do).
Anyway, this 2017 interview that came across my desk today was a perfect case study in the lesson Robert Updegraff’s 1916 book tried to teach.
The interviewer asked Rick (Goose’s guitarist and singer) whether or not he was excited for their upcoming batch of shows, their first official “tour,” that wasn’t a little rinky-dinky tour of a few shows.
Of course he was excited… there is no better feeling in the world than playing music on stage (and the band I was in years ago played much smaller shows than Goose would on this 2017 tour). And then Rick had an “Obvious Adams moment” himself:
He went on to explain how he noticed the most crucial element to his band’s growth was, best ya sit down before I reveal this shockingly obvious truth, playing more shows.
The more shows they played, the more their audience grew.
Could there be a simpler, more obvious way to grow?
No.
And yet, there are more bands in the metaphorical musical graveyard—bands whose members spent thousands upon thousands on studio time, promotion, paying off record labels, selling their soul on TikTok, etc. only for it to come crashing and burning down without even a fan to show for it—because of their aversion to this fundamental fact.
It reminds me of Stan Lee when he created Marvel back in the day. He wasn’t rich by any means during this time, and yet, he realized a simple fact: He could always write more words whenever he needed moolah.
And so it is when you know how to wield email.
I’ve yet to see a business where sending more emails doesn’t result in more sales.
It’s literally the most obvious solution to any problem.
And yet, most business owners add endless complexity (worrying about unsubscribes instead of making sales, worrying about whether they’re annoying their readers instead of becoming a better and more entertaining writer, worrying about the lower prices of their competitors instead of creating an emotional connection with their readers that makes price irrelevant) and worrying instead of rolling up their sleeves and just doing the work.
Because at the end of the day?
You just gotta do the work.
It ain’t sexy.
It ain’t a secret.
But it’s the only reliable thing that works across the human experience.
A band must play more shows to get fans the same way Stan Lee must write more words to get fans the same way a business owner must create more content to get fans.
It’s all the same thang: Just a different application of the “work.”
Anyway, while email is single-handedly the best conversion tool in a business’s arsenal… if email ain’t your bag, then it will never be as effective as it could be.
Same reason why a guitarist ain’t a drummer, why Stan Lee (the author of many comics and creator of many super heroes) wrote but didn't draw, and why I write emails so you can focus on your unique super power as a business owner.
Tired of feeling like a guitarist forced to play the drums?
Hit reply - and let’s see if banding together can bring in the bands. Whew, excuse the excessive puns I couldn’t resist at the end.
(Yeeeesh, I’m really getting into my “dad joke” era, eh?)
John
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