1. The Willie Sutton Strategy
Willie Sutton is a charismatic fellow. Very very smart. All of 5 feet 7 inches tall. He is a master of disguise. And a smooth talker to boot.
Oh and also – he is a prolific bank robber too!
Robbing more than 100 banks has landed him on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list in the 1950s.
Willie Sutton – one of the most successful bank robbers of all time
Willie has been unfortunate to have been caught by the police 3 times before. But he has been ingenious to escape prison all 3 times too!
- One time he holds a guard hostage with his own gun to escape.
- Another time he and 11 other inmates dig a tunnel out of the prison and escape.
- And the third time, Sutton and a few friends somehow get their hands on prison guard uniforms. Wearing the uniforms, they take 2 ladders across the prison yard to the wall after dark. When the search light hits them, Sutton yells “It’s Okay!” – and no one stops them!
In February of 1952, Willie Sutton is arrested for the 4th and the last time. A journalist named Mitch Ohnstad somehow gains permission to interview Willie while in prison.
At the end of the interview, Mitch being impressed by Sutton’s smarts asks him:
“Willie you are so smart. If you would have used your brains in business, you could have become the president of a big public company. If you were politically inclined, you could have become a senator or maybe even the president. So then why did you use your brains to rob banks?”
Without blinking, Willie answers:
“I rob banks because…
… that’s where the money is!”
Action Summary:
- Go where the money is.
- Target the people who are “willing” and “able” to buy your goods.
- Find out where your right people hang out. And go make your presence felt there.
2. Alan Weiss Traces His Referral Sources
The mistake most people make while implementing the Willie Sutton Strategy is they spread themselves too thin. They’ll try to target all the umpteen blogs and forums and social media sites where their target audience hangs out all at once.And then they’ll find that they don’t achieve the results that they should have.
Alan Weiss is a consultant extra-ordinaire. He runs a 7 figure per year management consulting practice. One day, he sits down to track how all of his clients find and approach him. And he finds that 90% of the business of his multi-million dollar consulting practice can be directly traced back to only 4 sources!
The Pareto Principle works very well in this case: 80% of your business will come from 20% places. So narrow your focus and pay more attention to fewer places.
(There is a connection between Seth Godin not being on Twitter and being a consistently best-selling author. He focuses on only a few things – but does them extremely well.)
Action Summary:
- Focus all of your effort on just 1 or 2 places where your audience hangs out. Saturate that place with your presence and awesomeness. And then move on to the next 2 places on the list.
- Remember to focus: even Willie Sutton robbed one bank at a time.
3. Chanakya’s Epiphany
2300 years ago in India, young Chandragupta – with the help of the great strategist Chanakya, builds an army by borrowing soldiers from the Himalayan kingdoms. In return, he promises to share between them half of whatever territory he manages to conquer from the greedy Nanda Empire. (The Himalayan kingdoms agree to lend soldiers because they have no risk except giving up a few soldiers, but the returns could be a part of a dynasty!)
Chandragupta then ventures into a war with the Nanda Empire but fails to seize control. He is in a dead lock with the Nanda Empire. Both the sides proved themselves equal in a few skirmishes.
At this time, Chanakya – a Brahmin and Chandragupta’s guru, is roaming through wilderness. He comes upon a hut and watches a mother and child. The child keeps burning his hand while eating khichidi (an Indian rice dish). So the mother scolds the child to eat from the edges and not the center, as the center will always be hotter.
This is the precise moment when Chanakya has an epiphany. He sends a message to Chandragupta to withdraw his forces and not to fight any more wars with the Nanda Emperor directly. Instead, he should go on and challenge the harmless and ignored independent small kingdoms that weren’t directly a part of the Nanda Empire, but laid at its periphery.
Chandragupta heeds to Chanakya’s advice. And starts conquering the kingdoms at the edges of the old Empire. With every new conquest, Chandragupta’s might grows.
After a year of such small conquests at the edges, Chandragupta once again challenges the Nanda king. But this time, he is a little more powerful and has a few more soldiers. And this time he wins.
Chandragupta goes on to create the Maurya Empire that for the first time unites India and brings on its “Golden” age.
Action Summary:
- Work your way up to fame. Don’t aim for Oprah. Don’t aim for the biggest place where your audience hangs out on Day 1. Start from the periphery. And make way towards the epicenter.
Further reading: The Art of Focusing
Action Summary:
- Create a list of 20-30 places where your audience hangs out.
- Blogs.
- Forums.
- Social media sites.
- Magazines and newsletters they read.
- Clubs they are a part of.
- And Events they attend.
- List these places in the order of easiest to get publicity from to hardest to get publicity from.
- And then work your way through the list – 1 or 2 places at a time.
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