I once asked a successful author how to market a book. He waved me off and said, “If the book is good you don’t need to market it. If the book is bad, no amount of marketing will help.”
He was exaggerating: I think his advice is like 80% true. But it’s definitely 80% true. And it applies to almost any product. The best marketing is a good product.
Jerry Seinfeld recently said:
Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.
His advice: “Get good at something. That’s it. Everything else is bullshit.”
Demographic historian T.H. Hollingsworth once published an analysis of the life expectancy of the British peerage. It showed a peculiar trend: Before the 1700s, the richest members of society had among the shortest lives – meaningfully below that of the overall population.
How could that be?
The best explanation is that the rich were the only ones who could afford all the quack medicines and sham doctors who peddled hope but increased your odds of being poisoned.
I would bet good money the same happens today with investing advice.
If a petty criticism about you is obviously false, you tend not to care. If anything it just makes the person criticizing you look dumb.
If the criticism could be true, you might become outraged because you know it’s a genuine attack on your identity.
Talking to Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant once said:
If I said, “Tim Ferriss is fat,” that would just bounce right off of you. But if