Not Far from the Tree

The Bike, the Boy, and the Jackass

June 2009

Issue # 14

Recently, my son Mason and I were getting ready for a garage sale and we decided to sell our old motorcycle. The bike ran great, but we hadn't used it in a while and we decided it just needed to go. Rather than sell the bike at the garage sale, we decided to list it on Craigslist in the hopes of getting a better offer.

We quickly received an offer from a man who lives a couple of miles away. He agreed to pay full price, but asked that we deliver the motorcycle. That posed a bit of a challenge. Because the motorcycle had not been licensed in a couple of years, we were not sure how to get it over to him. It wouldn't fit in our van and we didn't have a trailer that would work either.

In the end, we decided to just push it over.

So there we were, walking it along the street and a stranger came along and started laughing. He asked what were doing. We explained. He said, "I used to be on the police force. No one is going to care if you ride that motorcycle a couple of miles."

I thought that made sense, so I put Mason on the motorcycle. I kept walking because the motorcycle is not really designed for two people. Problem solved.

We went a little further and one of Mason's friends from school saw him on the bike. She asked him why in the world he was riding the motorcycle instead of me. She said that was SO DISRESPECTFUL (with rolling eyes like only a 5th grader can do).

So Mason jumped off and I jumped on to continue our trek.

Next thing you know, we got accosted by yet another neighbor. She looked at me and said, "I can't believe you would let your son walk while you ride. What kind of father are you?" (I kid you not.)

Now we didn't know what to do. These people were actually watching us to see what we would do. I thought, "You know what, I'm not even keeping this stupid motorcycle. What do I care if the shocks are ruined?" So Mason and I both jumped on the motorcycle.

We made it about 100 yards when Mason looked at me and said, "This is wrong, Dad." He was right, so we stopped.

So there we were. We still had a half mile to go and no way to get the stupid bike there. We thought about it for a while and I came up with the stupidest solution ever. We picked up the bike and carried it between us.

After a quarter mile, Mason (who is only 10) started getting really tired. Which led to a bit of trouble.

Before we reached the new owner's house, we had to cross a large drainage ditch. We got halfway across the bridge and the bike slipped from Mason's hands. It slid right over the edge. I couldn't hold on and the bike plummeted into the ditch, landing with a sickening crunch.

An older woman who was enjoying the spectacle commented, "That'll teach you!"

None of the above actually happened, of course. Some of you will recognize this as a retelling of one of Aesop's Fables, "The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey." So often when we are trying to launch an eNewsletter this is exactly how we operate.

We go to the internet and we look for advice. And there's a lot of advice out there. We start with one idea. But that is contradicted by something else we read. But then we read another something else, and the first something else doesn't make sense either. What ends up happening is we drop the whole newsletter idea in the ditch and we never launch our newsletter.

Take the topic of the best day and time to deliver your eNewsletter. After a quick review of the available advice, you might conclude that Tuesday or Wednesday is the best day and you should never publish on Monday or Friday. But don't stop there. A little further research and you will find that Friday and Wednesday are the best days. Yet another search will conclusively demonstrate that Monday is the single best delivery day. And off the bridge goes the motorcycle.

I'm not suggesting that you never get advice on how to improve your marketing, your website, or your newsletter (which is after all what I do.) But I am suggesting that if you try to listen to every voice out there you will do nothing but destroy your momentum. Want to know the best day to send out your newsletter? It's the day you actually do it.

In the end, you want to decide on a plan and execute that plan no matter what anyone else says. If it doesn't work, then you can tweak it. But if you don't complete your plan of action, you will never get that far. Get all the advice you need, but then (in the words of the ubiquitous Nike) Just Do It!